
Why the Brain Hates Slowpokes (2015) - pseudolus
http://nautil.us/issue/22/slow/why-your-brain-hates-slowpokes
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kylec
I don't mind people being slow if they're aware of their surroundings and
provide affordances for faster people to get around them. The slow people I do
mind (walkers, drivers, etc) are the ones that are in my way, and who could
easily move out of my way, but don't.

~~~
stouset
The worst example of this to me is people in the narrow aisles of small
grocery stores. I am _constantly_ aware of people approaching from either side
so that I can preemptively make way for them to pass. And yet I see people who
remain utterly oblivious to others despite being asked over a dozen times in a
handful of minutes to give room to squeeze by.

Certainly nobody—including myself—is perfect about this, but it’s
inconceivable to me how someone can be so unaware of the people around them,
especially after having been asked repeatedly to move out of the way.

~~~
foxyv
When I go to the grocery store I constantly have to remind myself that the
people around me have unique lives. They are most likely sleep deprived,
exhausted, in pain, hard of hearing, and just plain deaf. I guess this is why
manners are so important, you never know what a stranger is going through.

Then again sometimes they are self absorbed jerks that will block an entire
aisle while they try to find the cheapest can of soup with the latest
expiry...

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urlgrey
> As of 2012, videos that didn’t load in two seconds had little hope of going
> viral.

This finding aligns with the results of a survey of users of the Mux video
analytics service. We asked them "Which of the following streaming video
problems is the most frustrating for you when it occurs?" Video rebuffering or
stalled playback was considered the most annoying problem for 47% of
respondents; video picture quality was chosen by only 14.3%. Slow startup
times and rebuffering have a huge impact on the perceived QoE compared to
video picture quality.

[https://mux.com/blog/rebuffering-the-most-frustrating-and-
fr...](https://mux.com/blog/rebuffering-the-most-frustrating-and-frequent-
problem-for-video-consumers/)

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mrlyc
It depends on what you're used to. When I stated programming 42 years ago, it
took two days between submitting the punched card deck to the computer centre
and getting a printout of the results. Now I get concerned if my program takes
longer than 20 seconds to compile.

~~~
gameswithgo
>I get concerned if my program takes longer than 20 seconds to compile.

I go into a rage at 2 seconds!

~~~
DesiLurker
Both of you should try building chromium with ninja builds on any non-ssd
system. every freaking header change used to be close to 20 minutes if the
gods are happy.

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beobab
The brain only hates slowpokes when it's been told, repeatedly, that it hates
slowpokes.

Things are annoying if they are not as you want them to be, and you do not
have as much control over them as you would like.

Patience is a skill, like any other. You can train yourself to be more patient
by exposing yourself to situations where you need to be patient.

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bsder
> We now practically insist that Web pages load in a quarter of a second, when
> we had no problem with two seconds in 2009 and four seconds in 2006.

Actually, this is false. Anything less than 250ms has _always_ led to fewer
conversions, less engagement, etc.

Companies only tolerate this recently because, if they don't, they can't
monetize with ads which take the lifetime of the universe to load.

~~~
p1necone
It's also ignoring the fact that internet has gotten faster. Back in 2006
plenty of people were still on dial up, or low end DSL. _Everything_ would
have loaded in ~> 2 seconds for them.

~~~
jplayer01
That's not necessarily true. Websites have become much bigger and more complex
over the years.

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Dowwie
Try volunteering in disaster relief for the American Red Cross if you would
like a lesson in practicing patience

