
Ambient Cruelty - kawera
https://reallifemag.com/ambient-cruelty/
======
byproxy
"The students found the writer voicing negative opinions much more intelligent
and persuasive than the one voicing praise."

Well, this resonates. One of the things I do when scouring online reviews is
to search out the negative reviews. I dismiss reviews that are irrelevant to
the product itself and do (what I hope) is a reasonable job filtering out the
less-informed negative reviews. When I find a good, informed negative review I
tend to search through that particular reviewer's history to then find what
they HAVE reviewed positively. Because I do tend to think that person has more
expertise/knowledge.

Until I find a good, informed negative review on something they've rated
positively.

An aside: This site has lovely design.

~~~
lostgame
>> An aside: This site has lovely design.

The design is very neat, but I found it's actual readability on my MacBook Pro
to be awful.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Wait... is he _actually_ saying the site has nice design, or was that a joke?

I thought it was a call back to praise being dismissed and thought less
intelligent.

~~~
byproxy
No, I was being earnest.

------
voidhorse
A related note, taking the point about negativity's correlation with being
perceived as more intelligent: I've long wondered whether Hegel's notion that
thought itself is _fundamentally_ negative is true; it seems to make some
intuitive sense and also gels with findings like those article opens with. If
this is true to some extent, it's perhaps not that positive thoughts are less
intelligent, but that meaningful positive thoughts are more difficult to
obtain—as one necessarily has to pass through the negative first (thinking) to
reach them. Outright positivity is not thought but simple satisfaction. If
something doesn't disappoint us we really don't have any reason to _think_
about it aside from the way in which we think about wants and urges, which
isn't really thinking so much as it is desire. Really, only those poetic
spirits seem to have mastered thinking purely positively—that is _thinking_
desire.

In other words, it is not negative thought that's praiseworthy, but _critical_
thought—thought that questions—which must begin negatively. Often this
questioning begins (and unfortunately ends, for most) by questioning a thing
on its aspects that disappoint or dissatisfy, that's after all what urges the
questioning. To emerge from that position and to be able to, in turn,
acknowledge the positive qualities of the thing is to dwell in that serene and
moderate realm called reason, not too negative, not too positive—reasonable.

~~~
hnuser355
If someone is negative I usually hold them to a higher standard (and
correspondingly think them dumber for fixed intelligence) in many cases. If
you’re wrong but positive at least you’re helping to be in a good mood and
bring up people around you. If you’re negative incorrectly you’re wrong and
damaging the social mood.

------
evrydayhustling
Reading this reminded me of an old favorite lecture, on the origin of the word
"loser". It turns out losing wasn't always a widely used noun - it came into
popularity as a shorthand for lenders to evaluate loan prospects, specifically
in order to turn someone's past experience into a current trait. He goes onto
argue that this slight of hand really contributes to anxiety and inequality,
because it reinforces the idea that one bad experience can define your
identity.

It looks like Prof Sandage ultimately turned the lecture into a book:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/articles/A43081-2005Jan...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/articles/A43081-2005Jan27.html?noredirect=on)

------
noonespecial
Negative reviews can generally be tracked easily by registered user. It seems
like a good enough idea that the force of negative reviews should fall off
exponentially with respect to frequency per user that I'm surprised its either
not done more, or more apparent.

If someone complains all the time about everything, the people around them
quickly learn to ignore it. Our systems should too.

~~~
juhzy
Why? I only bother to write negative reviews, does that mean my opinion is
worthless, or that I think all restaurants/venues/products are bad?

~~~
byproxy
No, but it shows that you only care to share in the bad, not the good. There
is a tint to your worldview and it'd be useful for others to see that when
weighing what you have to say.

For the record, I rarely leave reviews. When I do, though, it's only for the
exceptionally bad or the exceptionally good.

~~~
juhzy
Why would I write a good review? If I go to a place and pay I expect to be
treated well; being treated the way I expect is not noteworthy (or
"reviewworthy")

~~~
byproxy
I'm not trying to change your process, but just letting you know that that
process is not the same for everyone, hence it'd be useful for others to know
your "tint."

It's interesting that your main criteria is how you feel you were treated,
though. Discussed in the article:

"Restaurant reviews in which people sound traumatized by perceived injustice
don’t tend to comment much on the food — it’s usually the perception of being
treated rudely or uncaringly that seems to have pushed people into processing
by writing out their feelings in a public forum."

~~~
juhzy
I think it's normal. Poor food may mean many things and most of them are not
malicious. But being treated rudely or uncaringly? You deserve your bad
review.

~~~
byproxy
>Poor food may mean many things and most of them are not malicious.

I honestly feel the same about poor service. I'm usually accommodating and
understanding, but I'm no monk. Of course there are times when I feel either
the poor food or poor service merit some mention.

Most of the time, however, I think "they're human, going through human things.
No big deal."

------
village-idiot
I think the other interesting factor is that the more you tailor your life’s
experiences, either in actuality or in perception, the less happy people seem
to be. I believe this to be similar to the choice of paradox, where extra
choices beyond a small number not only stress out the chooser, but result in
less long term satisfaction in the final decision.

~~~
jamiek88
This is a great point.

Back when I was a kid the choices available within the budget of a lower
middle class person of holiday, house location, schooling, medical care,
dentistry, food, restaurants, _everything_ was much less.

You were delighted to even be in a restaurant, on best behavior and it would
have to be terrible to warrant complaint.

People can now eat and drink pretty much whatever they want from around the
world at any time of the year having service business available to cater to
every whim that people of a certain level affluence can have their lives very
tailored to their tastes and expectations of service.

To then not get that, not be treated as the in crowd or perceive being valued,
can be very jarring.

Easy to dismiss as first world problems but I think it’s a real point.

------
ds0
Goodhart's law comes to mind: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to
be a good measure."

~~~
tCfD
Expect to see this, and/or its close cousin the McNamara Fallacy, among the
top blogpunditry memes of the next few years. If only it were possible to buy
stock in these phrases...

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
> If only it were possible to buy stock in these phrases...

Quite. If I'd bought stock in that logical fallacy site that was doing the
rounds a while back HN would've made me a billionaire by now.

------
seeker61
I'm glad to be old ... I think I'll be fortunate enough to pass by the bulk of
the crap that is coming downstream at us all.

------
mLuby
Asking the crowd: does anyone know of an in-depth comparison of rating systems
(thumbs, 3 stars, 5 stars, 1-10, etc)?

Also obligatory Black Mirror reference: Nosedive S3E1

~~~
combatentropy
I don't know, but I prefer binary. I agree with the author about numeric
ratings. If service meets my expectations, then I want to put a 3 or 4, which
to me means average or above average. A 5 means not only were all expectations
met but they surprised me by going way beyond my expectations. In fact this is
how Yelp describes it:

1 - Eek! Methinks not.

2 - Meh. I've experienced better.

3 - A-OK.

4 - Yay! I'm a fan.

5 - Woohoo! As good as it gets!

But the subjects of review seem to interpret the ratings like this:

1 - A black hole.

2 - Don't bother.

3 - If you're desperate.

4 - Could be better.

5 - Met all expectations.

To compound the problem, many people actually rate like this, causing what the
article calls "reputation inflation." The result is that I end up having to
use this higher scale when looking for service, because enough people have
been rating that way.

This is why I would prefer a binary up or down vote, with the option to
comment. My 1-2 would would translate to No, and 3-5 to Yes.

~~~
agglomerative
There's a name for this. I forget what it is, but I remember having the
principle explained to me, and thinking to myself: "Holy fucking shit, this is
some seriously out-of-touch economic high-finance quantit=ative bullshit."
Like, the kind that always expects all graphs to go "up and to the right."

Basically, you sit down at a restaurant, order a meal, and on the way out, the
host or hostess ask you to mark off checkboxes rating the experience on a
scall of 0 to 11. Eleven being the Spinal Tap interpretation, and Zero being
the hospital visit.

We now face three realities at this point, completely disconnected and
untethered from one another, doomed to resolve as if it were some Cellular
Automaton rule set from hell.

On the customer's side of things, maybe they let their small child mark the
check boxes to satisfy the child's curiosity, maybe it's the waitress' mom
dropping by for a visit to take pictures at their first summer job. Maybe it's
an actual normal customer, a random person with with a pulse, fresh off the
street. Anything goes. Straight A's or all balls.

The wait staff, have no control and don't actually know how they're being
judged. By what criteria, or rules. They just know what it means to wait
tables. They've been in a restaurant before, and they know what middle of the
road is. Unless specifically advised of the level of service, they observe
their surroundings, and follow their instinct, drawing on prior experience and
whatever they learn as they go.

The analyst that receives the feedback however, operates according to rules
both alien and strange to normal people. Only 9, 10 and 11 are positive
ratings. All others are an insult to the business, and all parties associated
with an 8 rating or less must be eliminated from the system. They don't want
to see paying customers that aren't ecstatic, nor do they want employees
delivering service that catches a middling rating. To them, a 9 represents a
danger zone, threatening profits with a backslide.

The person who explained this principle to me was my boss' boss, and it was in
this moment that I knew the ship I was on was aimed at an iceberg, and that I
needed to escape. He was referring to our _OKR_ process, while simultaneously
explaining this principle in relation to our review process. It was a very
"Steve Ballmer/Stack Ranking/Cut the Weakest Link" sort of discussion, and I
stuck my thumb out and found another job, for better pay, and less demand
within weeks.

~~~
Rotten194
was it the net promoter score?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter)

