Live data from Hacker News

The 5% Rule

jonpauluritis.com

81–90 of 212 posts

Re: The 5% Rule

#81
it's probably 20:80 rule at play though.

per 20 80 rule, 20% people are just 'not decent' no matter what, it has nothing to do with you, it's just statistics.

now for this small group again, 20% of them are really standing out, I mean really nasty, that makes it 4% of all people, right in the middle of the author claims: 3~5%.

it makes math-sense to me.

on the other hand, I would assume 4% people are genuinely kind and warm-hearted no matter what.

the rest 60%(excluding 20% at both ends), or 92% people(excluding the two 4% at each end) are just regular folks, a mix of selfish and generous day in and day out.

Re: The 5% Rule

#82
post #8

This roughly matches my estimate of evil drivers on the road, people cutting lines violently and not using turning lights, pushing to insert on the right when they used the emergency lane to pass everybody in a slowdown...

If you smell shit all day look under your own shoe.

You've listed a few really bad behaviors and then used a bunch of weasel word language to imply a bunch of casual minor rule breaking is equivalent to its worst case forms. No wonder you see bad drivers everywhere.

The guy who's not using his blinker for a lane change on the freeway in light traffic isn't equivalent to the guy weaving through traffic without blinkers and even then is the blinker really the problem there?

Riding in the breakdown lane to pass someone isn't equivalent to getting tin the breakdown lane for a couple dozen feet coming up to a light just prior to the creation of a dedicated turn lane in the same space.

If you didn't get bent out of shape over technical rule violations that are fairly reasonable in context you'd see a lot less bad drivers.

Re: The 5% Rule

#84
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s way less than that. We just got back from a ~1600 mile round-trip to visit family plus a week’s worth of incidental driving around town to buy groceries and visit other family nearby. On the highway segments, most cars were just trundling along between 2 and 20 mph over the limit, generally keeping reasonably to themselves. When an obstacle appeared on the roadside (stopped motorist, police, other), peop…

Maybe aggressive drivers don't drive aggressively all the time making you mistankenly assume they are good drivers?

I think there's more variables to it than that. It's absolutely possible to create aggressive drivers out of thin air if you annoy everyone around you enough. I used to drive commercial equipment that simply couldn't keep up with normal traffic. Needless to say when you are a rolling obstruction you see a ton of "aggressive" drivers because "normal" drivers do aggressive stuff rather than get stuck behind you. I can't imagine how bad it would be if I were driving like that in a vehicle that didn't very visibly have an excuse to be acting that way.

Re: The 5% Rule

#85

While I’m sure this is a real problem, I’ve been on the other side of this equation where you’ve tried your level best to get a problem resolved, and not only haven’t had it resolved, but have been repeatedly screwed even more. For example, many years ago, I signed up for a landline phone (when that’s all there was), and signed up for a particular special service that Ameritech was offering that would allow me to hav…

You are talking about the same problem. 3-5% customers are terrible and so are the 3-5% service personnel

Re: The 5% Rule

#86
I wish I had more data on it, but I've seen many different sources saying the same thing, but the number has more closely approximated 2.5% here, and so I'm wondering if there is discrepancy, or this is within the range of statistical accuracy of one or both.

Re: The 5% Rule

#90

Many laws, company policies, etc exist to prevent those 5% from causing damage to the rest of the population. So 95% of people have to live with restrictions and bureaucracy that merely exists for those small group.

"Live with" is a weird framing, isn't it? If we accept the claim for a moment, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the restrictions exist to give the 95% the best chance at a reasonable, unmolested life?

What's weird about daily life?

100 - ɛ percent of the population have to lock their cars and homes so that the ɛ percent of people won't steal or vandalize their property. The ɛ may be small, but while ɛ > 0, they can deal disproportionate damage unless everyone implements restrictions.

Post reply on HN