This is based on observations up to 2013.
We’ve had two big societal changes since then that seemed to make things worse to me, the latest being Covid.
I really wonder if that 5% would be noticeably higher today.
The 5% Rule
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Re: The 5% Rule
#52I’ve seen people who are very nice and one context be very not nice in another.
As an example, try being a medical doctor on HN. The toxic few are why I stopped posting about medical things here.
I’m not saying those responders are generally mean people. I think they’re normal people who for whatever reason feel wronged and are part of my world’s 5%.
Re: The 5% Rule
#53While 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…
I think the rule applies in both directions.
Re: The 5% Rule
#54The old adage: 'The customer is always right' which means a business should always have the best interests of customers at heart and always assume good faith, has turned on its head. Now customers have weaponized that old adage and presume an air of ugly hubris and are mean spirited because hey, 'The customer is always right'. Eh no, sometimes the customer is an asshole.
Re: The 5% Rule
#55Surely it’s more time based too, the ebb and flow of people sucking at different times has to be a factor. Not even 5% suck 100% of the time. There’s no way that 95% of people don’t suck 100% of the time either. Are we saying that 5 in 100 people will suck. If so think that’s an underestimate.
Some people suck all of the time.
Most people suck some of the time.
But almost nobody sucks none of the time.
Re: The 5% Rule
#56Earlier 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?
The aggressive drivers I personally know are always aggressive.
Re: The 5% Rule
#57The other possible sampling (which doesn't contradict the author's lived experience!) is that there are is a tiny fraction of uniformly nasty individuals, and a substantially larger (maybe even majority) of individuals who are nasty at individual points in time.
Re: The 5% Rule
#58The old adage: 'The customer is always right' which means a business should always have the best interests of customers at heart and always assume good faith, has turned on its head. Now customers have weaponized that old adage and presume an air of ugly hubris and are mean spirited because hey, 'The customer is always right'. Eh no, sometimes the customer is an asshole.
> which means a business should always have the best interests of customers at heart and always assume good faith
I thought it meant, at least originally, that a customer's choice to shop, or not, at your store needs to be treated as your failure to attract the customer, not the customer's failure for making the "wrong" choice.
Re: The 5% Rule
#59This 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...
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…
In theory the vast majority of your long road trip is going to be on wide open areas with low enough traffic volumes that there is no point of contention.
Add in heavy traffic and the number of negative interactions will go up. Then remember you tend to roll with the traffic in these situations that lower the total number of people you're subjected to.