

Why Your Brain Hates Slowpokes - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/22/slow/why-your-brain-hates-slowpokes

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makmanalp
For me it's a combo between this /and/ just people's attitude - it's fine if
_you_ want to be slow, but you have to be considerate of others. I wouldn't be
mad if you were walking slowly on the side of the street - probably wouldn't
even notice - but I'll be mad if you're walking slowly in the middle. It often
costs nothing to be considerate, and it makes life more pleasant for everyone!

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vanderZwan
Whenever I read about people considered to be inconsiderate, I wonder: did
anyone bother to make this clear to the "inconsiderate" people in question?

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Zuider
It is a basic social obligation to be alert to the impact that one is having
on others.

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vanderZwan
What does that have to do with the social obligation to point out when someone
isn't?

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Zuider
It depends on whether the offender cares or not. If they cared, they probably
would not be transgressing in the first place. If they didn't care, they would
probably react aggressively to being told off.

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petercooper
To twist it around, I don't think it's the "slowpokes", I'm annoyed by not
being able to do things at my own pace. So if I can go around someone or use a
different checkout, great! I suspect it's not a problem with slowpokes, it's
more the loss of personal control and autonomy. (I bought a car specifically
for its crazy levels of acceleration for this reason :-))

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breadbox
I have terrible sidewalk rage, but it has nothing to do with slowpokes -- I
can't stand people who walk straight down the middle and don't make room. "Oh,
I'm so sorry your highness, I didn't realize this was _your_ sidewalk" [says
the voice in my head that I can't vocalize because unlike being in an
automobile the other person would hear me].

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maw
I've said "con permiso, abuelita" \-- roughly "excuse me, grandma" \-- to
dudes half my age waddling down the street.

I should do it more.

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crazcarl
The conclusion (spoiler alert) that showing gratitude can help fight the
negative emotional reaction to impatience sounds a lot like stoicism.
Particularly the idea that you should think about the positive things that you
have, rather than the negative thing happening to you right now (being stuck
in a slow moving line).

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habitue
"Patience is a virtue that’s been vanquished in the Twitter age."

Oh, it's one of those. Where unnamed "cognitive scientists" verify that
everything was better in the good old days, and the world is just too fast
now.

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speakeron
"I started to fear that we would be so late for our reservation that we would
miss it. But when we got to the restaurant, we were no more than a couple
minutes behind. My sense of time had warped."

Isn't the solution in this case simply a watch or some other form of portable
timepiece?

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spatten
Maybe I'm just rationalizing it because I want to think of myself as a calm,
non-ragey person, but to me it feels like something else.

I agree with others that it feels rude when someone else takes up the whole
sidewalk.

But it's also that I walk a lot, and use it as a form of transportation. I go
twice as fast as a lot of people on the sidewalk, and it seems like if people
just sped up a bit they'd find walking more useful, which would make them
drive less, which is a good thing, and it drives me crazy that this isn't
obvious to them.

Like I said, I'm probably just rationalizing :)

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kazinator
It's a dopamine thing. When things are going according to a boring routine
(like getting from point A to point B at constant speed, unimpeded by any
jam), you get a dopamine reward. Supposedly, this is evolutionary. Being happy
while bored helps you sit on a tree branch for hours until the predator below
goes away. Once you've gone agricultural, it helps you do repetitive field
work from dawn to dusk.

This is not specifically just "sidewalk rage". For instance, the annoyance at
being disrupted in the middle of playing a video game is a facet of the same
thing.

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wes-k
I use to be a fast walker myself. Still fall back into it from time to time.
I've enjoyed slowing down my pace and taking in a bit more of the scenery.
It's also fun going slowly and seeing the hectic world rush by.

And always, always, try and walk on the side so others can pass easily!

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agumonkey
Was it true that people were happy waiting 2 seconds for a webpage 10 years
ago ?

The unrewarding theory is still genius nonetheless. The faster the worse ?

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barrkel
I was waiting much more than 2 seconds, 20 years ago. But you'd do things like
disable images to speed things up.

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Zuider
The pages used to display an active load-bar to reassure the user that
something was happening. One expected slowness back then, especially on dial-
up, and you could always hit [esc] once enough of the page loaded.

There was a time, especially on older, slower Windows, that people would stab
and swipe feverishly at the icon on the screen, resulting in multiple
instances of the app when it finally emerged from the Stygian depths of the
HD, and many copies of the icon on the desktop, since swiping served to copy
the icon.

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pixl97
A load bar also made sense back then because pages actually loaded and then
were complete. These days with async calls a page doesn't ever have to be
finished, it can keep refreshing parts of its content, or be one of those
never ending pages you run in to at times. Now you can never really be sure
what a page is up to without looking at the code.

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tls
Once upon a time writers actually took the time to investigate their "tools",
like flying to Hawaii and sitting down with a psychologist in a small cafe and
going over the numbers if you must.

Not everyone is in a New York state of mind. Once you Once Upon a time it
speaks to narrowness.

~~~
pavel_lishin
This comment looks like a markov chain to me.

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lighthazard
Yes.

