
The high speed of society has jammed our internal clock - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/71/flow/why-your-brain-hates-slowpokes-rp
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cbanek
I have sidewalk rage. But it's not really about having people walk slower.
What gets me is when people have no situational awareness (on their phones,
mostly), and are walking very slowly because of that. Then they tend to clump
in groups and take the whole sidewalk and won't move over to let you pass,
even if you're walking in the opposite direction. I think it's inconsiderate.
Same for deciding to gather your whole family right in front of the airport
bathroom, just to make it harder for everyone else entering and exiting. I'm
always amazed how people tend to aggregate and stop in the worst places
(intersections, tight spaces, in the middle rather than out of the way).
Traffic patterns are really quite amazing and I think a great source of
understanding human nature.

~~~
helloindia
Or a group of 3-4 people occupying the whole sidewalk coming towards(infront)
of you, they see you coming, and still won't give space to let you pass. Most
times, I just stand and stare at them. This even happens at work, when I am
walking up the stairs.

~~~
sbr464
I love visiting Japan, where everyone is super aware and would never do this.
It’s amazing the difference in cultures.

~~~
bschwindHN
No no no no, people are absolutely _not_ super aware here. Sure they might
mostly stay on one side on the escalator, but that's where it ends.

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animal531
You're not really supposed to stand on one side on an escalator. In certain
places it became the social norm, but when long escalators are loaded up it
leads to a majority of the weight being on one side which in turn leads to
more critical breakdowns where all the passengers are dumped to the bottom.

Ideally everyone should just stand in the middle.

~~~
bschwindHN
Unfortunately you just can't do that in Japan, it is pretty universal (though
Kansai stands on the right, and Kanto stands on the left).

In extremely congested areas people will stand on both sides, but the
convention is to stand on one side and have a "fast lane" on the other side. I
realize it has less throughput, and puts more strain on the escalators, but
that's not changing any time soon.

The point is, escalators and perhaps train boarding are the only two times
where people will be mostly self aware of their position. Walking on the
sidewalks is not one of those times, everyone is staring at their phones, or
walking in groups of 2-3 across.

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anotheryou
I think this explanation can be simplified greatly.

It's an obstacle, literally in my way to fulfill my goal. Why wouldn't I be
upset at least slightly about that?

To elaborate a bit more: I was minding my own business, in thoughts and
happily walking at my own pace. Now I'm ripped out of this rather meditative
state. My thoughts are interrupted, there as something challenging my goal of
getting somewhere and I need to handle a sudden social or at least spacial
situation.

Only now what one might want to call "zen" comes in to play. Now the question
is if I can resort to ratio and figure a few seconds won't change a thing and
I can quickly get back to my thoughts while they are still fresh.

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bryanrasmussen
I don't mind someone walking slow that much, most people walk slower than me
even when I'm not energized about something, what I hate is if they take up so
much space that I can't get past them and generally they don't take up that
much space because they're big but because they are normal size but need to
take the middle of a narrow path.

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gridlockd
_" We now 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."_

Not true at all. The "scientific" benchmark of "instant" page loads is 250ms.
This is the goal. Pages should load instantly because they _can_ load
instantly, poor connection or large content notwithstanding. Four second page
loads were absolutely not "okay" in 2006. They weren't even the norm.

Always aim for those 250ms, _everywhere_. For example, if your programming
workflow takes more than a second to do a build iteration cycle, it's bad.
Slow tools are bad. The status quo may be _bad_ , but that's no excuse not to
aim higher.

~~~
nostrademons
The parent comment is downvoted (pretty heavily, since an upvote still didn't
un-grey it) as I reply, but it's absolutely correct.

I was doing latency optimization for Google in 2009. There was a strong
negative correlation between latency and click-through rate - enough that the
additional latency of adding JQuery (~140ms IIRC) would've cost us about
$150M, and just moving the ads above the results in document order was
estimated at $50M (the latter figure turned out to be wrong when I ran the
experiments in 2010 - broadband penetration had made the latency difference in
document order negligible - but that was the figure Marissa Mayer got in 2002
when most users were on dialup, extrapolated out to Google's 2010 revenues). 2
seconds was absolutely too long; our target was 250ms for the whole search to
come back, including all backend calls.

If anything webpages have gotten slower today, with the rise of SPAs with lots
of Javascript. Some of that is compensated for by faster Internet (though not
a lot; in most of the U.S, speeds haven't budged much since 2009), but a lot
is just that people have given up on the sort of marginal use-cases like
amusing themselves that they used the web for in the 00s, and now tend to use
it only for important things where they're willing to put up with slowness.

~~~
andrewflnr
It's technically correct but irrelevant to the point the article is trying to
make, which is more about tolerance of users for sub-par performance than
about where the goal should be set. Granted, you don't have to be relevant.
There's plenty of room for making side points as long as you don't try to
present them as a takedown of the OP.

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rootusrootus
Cool story time. I actually was the target of a bit of 'sidewalk rage' not all
that long ago.

Not really a sidewalk, but effectively one. Walking down the main hallway in
our office (not terribly long, maybe a hundred feet), one of the guys who
works not too far from me was behind me, and I wasn't walking too fast (funny,
I'd say I wasn't exactly slow either, probably ambling a bit at perhaps 2.0
mph, I've never really felt like speedwalking to my desk to sit for a couple
hours). There's a point near the area we both work in where it jogs to the
right and you can go around either side of a table, and the guy behind me
actually sped up a bunch and cut me off on the other side of the table. Close
enough in front of me to be rude about it, but he really needed to be in front
of me. At that point we were maybe 25 feet from the area where we work. I
almost laughed aloud.

It did make me wonder what it's like to be him. He always seems outwardly
angry, never says 'hi' to anyone he doesn't know well, hardly ever smiles,
etc. Now I wonder if he lives out his days getting pissed at everyone that
walks too slow for his liking, kinda like how I sometimes feel when I'm
driving and can't find a clear lane that wants to go the same speed as me. The
anger I feel in that situation has had a profound impact on my approach to
driving as I've grown older; I try much harder now to remember that I'm not
actually in a big hurry and it rarely matters one bit how long it takes to
drive somewhere. I changed my definition of 'winning' the driving game as
getting to my destination without my blood pressure rising.

~~~
Moru
Added bonus: Driving slower means less fuel usage. Important in countries like
Sweden where fuel is expensive. Try driving 70 km/h instead of 90 km/h, the
difference is significant with a modern car.

~~~
pmalynin
Uhh, idk but when I can get my car into overdrive it is about twice as fuel
efficient. At 70km I would have to be in fourth or fifth, which isn't nearly
as close.

Actually I think this is true about most ICE cars.

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philpem
For me it's not so much slow walkers that's the problem - everyone walks at a
different speed, and I tend to walk quite quickly anyway (pretty close to a
slow jog, I'm told).

The more annoying thing are the "street zombies" who - upon their phone
beeping - stop dead in the middle of the street. Usually at a crowded bus stop
on a narrow street where it's impossible to pass. By that point they're so
oblivious to what's happening around them (or wearing noise-cancelling
headphones and listening to music so loudly I can hear it too!) that it takes
two "excuse me please"-s or a tap on the shoulder to snap them back into
reality.

I don't know why I find it so annoying, but I do. It does, however, make me
appreciate the people who are considerate. The phone goes beep, they move to
the side and make a decent effort to leave room for people to get by.

I turned the beeper and vib motor off on my phone (well actually, the vib
motor is broken and spares are NLA). I'll deal with it when it's convenient
and safe to do so, thanks. And people are generally okay with this - so long
as they know that if they need me, they're in for a bit of a wait.

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AznHisoka
My pet peeve isn’t slow walkers but people looking at their phones, bumping
into you and telling you to “watch where you are going”. Similarly in driving,
I don’t mind slow drivers (after all they could just be beginners), but
drivers who feel they own the road and double park right across another double
parked car in the opposite road.

~~~
pmiller2
People who drive a little slow don’t bother me, but the ones that drive 45mph
on the freeway when there’s no good reason for it (traffic, etc.)? Those
people piss me off. If you can’t go approximately the speed limit on the
freeway when traffic conditions are good, you don’t belong on the freeway.

~~~
hedora
“Left lane fast, right lane slow” is actually _not_ the law in California.

It really should be though — traffic in CA flows ridiculously poorly compared
to everywhere else I’ve driven.

(Left lane fast, right lane slow is the law in many parts of the US, even
though passing on the right is generally legal too.)

~~~
pmiller2
Wrong. Skip to page 5 here:[https://www.mwl-law.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/05/KEEP-RIGH...](https://www.mwl-law.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/05/KEEP-RIGHT-TRAFFIC-LAWS-IN-ALL-50-STATES-
CHART-00214409x9EBBF.pdf)

Not only do vehicles traveling "at a speed less than the normal speed of
traffic moving in the same direction" have to keep right (CVC § 21654), there
are often signs indicating this on the freeway.

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mindslight
And yet the people most glued to their device-dopamine loops are the ones most
likely to be ambling along...

The problem isn't really slow walkers (etc), but rather the ones who are in
the way due to not paying attention and seem to justify it by thinking
everybody should just walk as slow as themselves. One can be slow and
considerate, just like one can be fast and inconsiderate. The latter mainly
just comes to a head with people walking opposite directions though, for
obvious reasons.

~~~
capsulecorp
I have to agree with you. Same issue with slow drivers, its really a matter of
consideration not speed.

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rayraegah
In Tokyo, people drive their bicycles on the sidewalk (ment only for
pedestrians) while completely ignoring the bicycle lane with painted
instructions for them. They can't drive fast and usually end up causing a mess
by almost running into someone every 30-60 seconds.

What's even worse is they don't even ring their bells but try to sneak past
you. Most of these cyclists are not alone, they have their kids in a basket.

This causes me to rage. These days I just walk on the bicycles path since all
the bicycles are in the pedestrian walkway.

~~~
zulln
Do you have any guess on why people are doing that?

~~~
rayraegah
They fear driving on the road and prefer personal safety or value personal
safety (self preservation reasons)

I had a friend who did that and I proceeded to interview/profile her. I didn't
ask her why she did that, I simple talked to her about the subject and noticed
the primary reason was fear of driving on the road, secondary was laziness
i.e. they'd have to cross the road and drive on the other side to reach their
target or cross the road to drive on the correct side and cross the road again
for the target which could be a little far off from the crossing.

I've been looking for opportunities to talk to more people who do this to get
more insight into the problem.

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paultopia
I really wish people would at least try to see if economic pressure is an
explanatory variable here. Intuitively, it seems to me that when I get angry
at slow people it's usually because, eg, I'm trying to get to work. Or I
worked late and am late for the next thing. As the pressures from the main
thing that structures our time go up, wouldn't you think that our anger at
lack of control over the other constraints on our time go up?

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carapace
> Research has shown meditation and mindfulness—a practice of focusing on the
> present—helps with impatience, although it’s not entirely clear why.

Er...

Ever try to be impatient without tensing your muscles?

Ever try to mediate without relaxing your muscles?

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SubiculumCode
I walk fast because I am trying to squeeze a liitle exercise in. Someone who
saunters (in the middle of the sidewalk) can be frustrating.

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pmiller2
Here are some scenarios that get me: multiple slow walkers taking up more than
half the sidewalk, and people running into me when I’m walking so far to the
right, I’m practically rubbing up against a building on my right side. Both of
these happen to me on a regular basis in SF.

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trophycase
I somewhat agree but slowpoke on the sidewalk are also somewhat of a modern
problem. Because of the priority cars are given over humans, walking in cities
is essentially a 1 dimentional affair, so it's somewhat understandably
infuriating when someone is holding up everything and has no awareness

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temdbej
I’m usually the one who rages at slow walkers, but going to Amsterdam was a
humbling experience because I seemed to inadvertently walk into angry bikers
on a bike path everywhere I went

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skookumchuck
The article posits that this is something new. Hardly. My whole life I've
agitated behind slow drivers. Just yesterday I got stuck behind someone going
25 in a 35 for several miles. Behind me was a looooong tail of cars, probably
all wondering wtf was going on.

This sort of thing has always been maddening to me, since long before the
internet. Though in my younger days I'd take risks getting around them.

~~~
freedomben
I hear ya man. To make things even worse, around where I live many of these
drivers will turn onto the road I'm on (now in front of me) when they didn't
have time. So I have to hit my brakes to avoid running in to them, and then
have to drive 10 to 15 mph slower than I was going before. I'm getting a
little irritated just writing about it lol

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djKianoosh
I laugh at all these responses. Im the one who purposely goes slow. AMA

~~~
tuesdayrain
Why purposely go slow? Sometimes I take my time because I don't want to start
sweating, but I don't think I've ever actually walked slowly anywhere.

~~~
djKianoosh
why go fast? I enjoy walking slowly.

~~~
koyote
I am not sure where you live but when I was living in London walking slow vs
walking fast meant less time spent on a stressful commute and less time wasted
just getting to places.

A slow stroll can be very pleasant if you're in the countryside but in a large
city you rather get from A to B as quickly as possible when in crowded areas;
especially if it is your daily routine. A large group walking in front of you
and blocking your path are literally wasting your time. That wasted time adds
up a lot on a daily basis. (5 minutes 'wasted' each way a day on your commute
would equate to over 40 hours a year of time spent walking slowly behind a
large group of people).

~~~
icebraining
I live in a big city, and I still often enjoy walking slowly. Walking (and
cycling, some days) is the best part of my commute, I want to savour it. It's
being stuck in the metro or bus that I'd rather speed up.

People blocking your path is an orthogonal issue; I always take care not to do
that, regardless of the speed I'm going at.

