michaelmrose
Born on August 28, 2014•10867 Karma
I don't understand why people do this.
The ones that truly suck (in my area) are the CVS ones. They have a glass jaw, and it's quite easy to make a mistake that requires the exasperated attendant to come over, and get it unstuck.
That has nothing at all to do with the person using the machine, and everything to do with the geeks that wrote the software. Whenever I see someone (regardless of their age or "digital native" status) struggling with tech, I blame the designers; not the user.
In my experience, if we want to design stuff to be used by humans, then it starts with getting comfortable with our own humanity. Empathy is useful, when designing stuff.
If we don't like people, then we're unlikely to design stuff that people like to use.
For those who might be curious, The Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman, is an excellent book for getting in touch with empathetic design.
It really depends on what we are designing, and who we are designing for.
> little to do with liking others
Sounds pretty bleak. I've come to understand what a profound disadvantage misanthropy is.
Drives me crazy watching people ahead of me try to do this. If the transaction hasn't been completed what precisely do they or indeed you think you are paying for again like handing the store an electronic blank check? I agree to pay...whatever the total ends up being!
Yeah, it's "trusting" the store, but it has never resulted in unwanted charges. I do it for the person in line behind me. I can afford it, if there was to be an issue, and the service desk is about ten feet away.
In Japan, they make a ceremony of giving you your goods before accepting payment.
The only exception is that with some hardware/software is that within a narrow window it may be possible to go back and make a change after putting the pinpad in payment mode.
Remember the pinpad is a second computer not a peripheral.
I have never in decades of paying for things ever seen a checkout where you can tap right away.
The US has systems that make it easy to take the money away.
Giving it back...'nother story...
Vaccine denial requires one to ignore decades of fairly simple positions about which no expert credibly disagrees nor has in our lifetime.
It's like watching 2 packs of athletes some of which are failing to clear 1 meter hurdles whilst on the other side some are tripping on little nubs set in the floor.
Many issues are simply as black and white. The earth just isn't less than 10k years old, the miasma theory of disease isn't correct, too many brown people in America isn't a problem to be solved, the dems didn't fix the election in 2020, tax breaks for the rich don't trickle down and so forth. Conservationism in America has meant a rejection of progress for centuries and not a preservation of virtues. Slavery was a moral evil not an alternative social contract.
If one side situates itself firmly on the side of evil it doesn't mean that the other side are on the side of the angels but the positions and ideals however poorly implemented or followed are factually and morally correct. A position situated between isn't wise or worldly its a sign of moral cowardice or intellectual disability.
If someone asks you what 2 + 2 equals the answer isn't halfway in between 4 and 87 its just and only 4.
That's how partisans think. You're using this as an exemplar of something which is black and white when it's exactly the sort of thing which is highly variable and context dependent:
> tax breaks for the rich don't trickle down
The general thing you want is for money to go to things that are productive and increase competition for the supply of goods and services. If it's spent on building housing then people get jobs building housing and housing becomes more affordable. If it's given to a company that builds tanks the army doesn't want who spends it on lobbying to get even more then ordinary people receive no material benefit while paying part of the cost, and suffer the opportunity cost of it not being used for a productive thing.
Which implies that tax breaks for anyone building productive things like housing can be good, even if the developers are rich, because they use the money to expand their construction operations and increase the amount of housing that gets built. Whereas tax breaks for high frequency traders are bad because high frequency trading is useless and increasing the incentive to spend resources doing it is as counterproductive as building unnecessary tanks. But in the latter cases you still may be better off to do something to thwart it rather than taxing it and giving the government a perverse incentive in the form of revenue to cause it to expand.
Moreover, the premise of supply side economics is that business owners have the incentive to spend the money increasing productive capacity so they can get more sales, when one of the other things they can do with it is to buy up the competition. That doesn't imply that the former never works, what it implies is that it only works in combination with meaningful antitrust enforcement to prevent the latter from happening instead.
Which is to say, it's not black and white.
You can point all these distinctions inside the tent as much as you want, but the reality of this is that conservatism in the United States is everything the parent comment said and more.
And maybe I could give you the "Young Earth" part not being a talking point, but "Creationism" definitely IS a talking point, and is still a crazy thing to believe in 2026.
Slavery is a position that was supported by the overwhelming majority of southern conservatives immediately prior to its abolishment.
The abuse of immigrants is something that the majority of conservatives are willing to accept even as they are killed.
Conservativism is a constellation of selfish idealogically motivated positions which necessarily encompass many things embarrassing and others vile.
Some embrace the vile whilst other's believe they can use the stupid to achieve ends like a return to a country dominated by white Christian men, a more hierarchal society where money and power flow to the right sort, a more friendly economic environment where they hope to achieve greater personal success, staving off social and political change etc.
The most ugly aspects are poisoning everything and they cannot be ejected without losing the numbers needed to retain power and cleaving to them will itself cause the loss of power unless they also end democracy.
The majority of those who call themselves Republicans will reject or have rejected both democracy and nonviolence because the alternative would be accepting defeat amongst a group self selected for selfishness.
Remember prepared statements can be written by smarter people. Ask him to speak extemporaneously and find out how stupid he really is.
If everyone had the same attitude this would probably already be the case.
Further it may still make sense to use human reports to gate some automation even if it slows response.