“They would have said faster horses” – An example of asking wrong questions • Hacker News Board

Re: “They would have said faster horses” – An example of asking wrong questions

#31

Post by nemosaltat » Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 6:12 AM UTC

> P.S. This article is not GPT-3 generated

This stands out to me. When I frequented reddit, folks would often preface a post with some sort of pre-apology about their English. Now, when I read articles with strange grammatical features, my first thought is “what are the chances this was generated.”

Recent Personal Anecdote: While struggling to get OS X to run in a VM, on AMD architecture I came across several unattributed guides with informative, topical content where the language was just a little “off.” It occurred to me that they might be ESL or translated, but none had any attribution. For some reason it finally struck me as odd that such detailed, technical guides wouldn’t mention an author or at least acknowledge “The team at xyzWebCollaboritive.”

Several guides under the same domain name contained relavent information on my very specific search topic, with langue that was “uncannily” askew.

Is this just me?

Re: “They would have said faster horses” – An example of asking wrong questions

#32

Post by klavinski » Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 11:28 AM UTC

detaro wrote: post #20

chongli wrote: post #19

This is also known as the XY-problem [1]. People want a solution to X, and they think Y is the way to solve it. But they’re having trouble doing Y and so they ask for help with Y. The problem is that Y is not the best way to solve X and you’re confused about why they’d ever want to do Y. Life would be much easier if they had just asked for help solving X. [1] https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/66378

Is there a name for the reverse, when Stack Overflow assumes you don't understand your constraints and propose all possible solutions to what they think is X that aren't a solution to Y?

It has been called the YX problem a few times on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23599250

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22842747

Re: “They would have said faster horses” – An example of asking wrong questions

#33

Post by chernov » Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 12:33 PM UTC

nemosaltat wrote: post #31

> P.S. This article is not GPT-3 generated This stands out to me. When I frequented reddit, folks would often preface a post with some sort of pre-apology about their English. Now, when I read articles with strange grammatical features, my first thought is “what are the chances this was generated.” Recent Personal Anecdote: While struggling to get OS X to run in a VM, on AMD architecture I came across several unattri…

Google simply generates the guides on demand and throws a link somewhere in the search results for you :)

Re: “They would have said faster horses” – An example of asking wrong questions

#34

Post by apostacy » Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

parsimo2010 wrote: post #11

catalogia wrote: post #2

Here's my problem with that quote: it comes from the same man who also said "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black." Considering that context, I view his horses quote as another expression of his contempt for what other people want, even when they want something reasonable. Also, Henry Ford did not invent the car. Cars existed before he mass produced them; had he asked peo…

Here's my problem with people that have heard a few popular quotes and think they understand the whole story: for the first several years the Model T came in several different colors. It switched to black only because of demand, then eventually they went back to offering multiple colors when they could. Ford only switched to making black cars only when the demand was so high that the production lines couldn't keep up…

But I think that quote is usually invoked by people when they blatantly disregard the wishes of their customers.

It's just a way to justify "screw the users, they have no idea what they want, I know what they want, because I'm a genius like Henry Ford, and my users are stupid."

I heard that Steve Jobs was fond if saying that. And sure, Steve Jobs had a lot of success, but people don't remember his failures as much. Steve Jobs was responsible for the Apple III, a fiasco for Apple computers because Jobs insisted on not having fans in it.

He was adamant that the era of fans in computers was over, and the Apple III was a disaster that kept overheating. I am sure that when engineers tried talking Jobs into reconsidering, they just gave them that Henry Ford platitude and dismissed them.

I have heard so many times disastrously unpopular UX redesigns and dark patterns were justified with pigheaded platitudes about how stupid users are.

So regardless of what Henry Ford himself actually meant at the time, the perception today is that it was justification for disregarding customers.

Re: “They would have said faster horses” – An example of asking wrong questions

#35

Post by foxyv » Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 3:17 PM UTC

As a person who has ridden horses I would say horses that don't poop. After that, horses that don't throw you randomly, need constant vet checkups, make tons of dust, smell funny, or bite. Far in the distant horizon of the problems with horses is speed.