Stuff you just don't get.

[profloater]

I just ate, and enjoyed, Marmite on toast for breakfast. You can't explain that.

Apart from a time difference I did exactly that too. Coincidence?

[profloater]

I seem to get it in real life, too.
Shortly before I retired, a recently-arrived colleague asked me, "Why does X always call you, 'The Man Who Doesn't Like Lord Of The Rings'? They say it every time they see you or speak about you."
"Because I once said, within the hearing of X but not to X, that I found the movie The Fellowship of the Ring both boring and annoying."
"Recently?"
"No, when it was first released."
"A decade ago?"
"Longer. Yes."

Grant Hutchison

Is it because you actually read the book first?
I find many films disappointing when I have read the book. Once in a while the director lifts the story up but usually the cuts eviscerate the characters. But I have not encountered long term labelling for opinions, or it is well behind my back. I cannot stand soaps, especially the Archers (a very long running radio soap on BBC4) but it is useful to kick me into action when tending to sit and listen to other programmes there.

It amazes me how many apparently intelligent folk get hooked onto these soaps, but they are tolerant when I walk off if they have to be discussed. I think it is guilt tolerance. Oh and another subject is football, cannot stand the discussions which also invade decent radio schedules. But that has left me out of that whole tribe, which is not as large as it likes to think it is.

[Grey]

Otherwise it would be the "stuff no-one in their right minds could possibly enjoy" thread.

I'd imagine that such a thread could be quite long. Even if restricted to things that some people (presumably not in their right minds) appear to enjoy anyway.

[grant hutchison]

Is it because you actually read the book first?

I did read the books first (multiple times), but I don't think that was a big influence on my feelings about Jackson's films. I tend to view the book and the film as entirely separate entities, because each medium has its own narrative strengths and weaknesses. Oddly, when I'm in conversation with people who enjoyed the films, when they hear my views they commonly say, "Oh, but you'd feel differently if you'd read the books." I find it interesting that, in the case of the LOTR films, there seems to be an assumption that reading the books will enhance one's enjoyment, and that anyone who didn't enjoy the film must not have read the book--which I think is the reverse of what's often said about "the film of the book".

Grant Hutchison

[grant hutchison]

On the theme of "stuff I don't get but actually find a little worrying", someone just arrived at my blog using the following search:

it is floccinaucinihilipilification to state that in farrago of biochemical reaction initiate in my encephalon upon visualizing though culminating in the eliminating of an inexpressible felling

Grant Hutchison

[Torsten]

On the theme of "stuff I don't get but actually find a little worrying", someone just arrived at my blog using the following search:
Grant Hutchison

Could've been written by one of my former professors. I did learn a few things, but not so much about the topic of the course.

[PetersCreek]

If someone asks if anyone shares their positive opinion, it certainly seems rude to share a negative one, particularly if it amounts to no more than "I hated it!" And people who say, "I simply loved X, has anyone else tried it?" are probably not soliciting negative views. But if someone asks for "an opinion", they should be ready to hear a negative one. And if they expresses surprise at negative opinions of something they like, then maybe they should be prepared to hear other folk saying, "Well, I agree with the negative views because ..."

I encountered an instance in a similar vein just this morning. I own a Sawstop brand table saw, which is equipped with a first-of-its-kind safety feature. I'm also a member of a Facebook group set up expressly "for people who currently own a SawStop or are seriously considering getting one." A member of the latter sort posted to ask if there were any disadvantages to owning the saw, in comparison to conventional models.

In the middle of many positive, lighthearted, and constructively critical posts, one poster sourly complained that the saw's safety feature allows its owners to be "brainless", that it's a Taiwan quality product with an Italian price tag, and so on. This garnered several negative opinions of his opinion and while I was composing my own brilliant reply, his post disappeared as did he. Unfortunately, trolls like that aren't uncommon.

[kpatz]

...one poster sourly complained that the saw's safety feature allows its owners to be "brainless"...

That could be said about many "safety features" and worse yet, warning labels, these days. Especially dumb ones like "cup contains hot coffee" or "do not iron clothes while wearing them", which were probably inspired by legal teams rather than common sense.

Things like SawStop, and car airbags and seatbelts can save lives (or fingers), but some things like the nanny features in newer cars (blind spot/collision warning for instance) can cause some people to become complacent or even careless, reducing safety. I suppose SawStop could do the same, but if it were me, I'd be just as nervous around that spinning blade as on any other power saw.

I tend to say to myself when I'm feeling cynical (which these days is 99.999% of the time), warning labels interfere with natural selection.

[Van Rijn]

I tend to say to myself when I'm feeling cynical (which these days is 99.999% of the time), warning labels interfere with natural selection.

Hah. You reminded of a couple old stories - once when a friend received an electric pencil sharpener, much hilarity ensued when we read the surprisingly long instructions on how to use it. Like: Sharpener must be plugged in for use. Here are electrical safety tips. Here’s how you insert a pencil. Insert only the wood end, DO NOT insert the metal and eraser end. It is only intended for wood pencils. DO NOT insert mechanical pencils or pens, or anything else aside from standard wood pencils. And so on.

Another example, we kept an Amana microwave oven for a very long time - it was well built and it took a long time before new microwaves did anything new. We still had the Amana’s instruction book, and I compared with the new microwave’s. The new instruction book was much shorter, except for one thing - the Amana had a couple of pages on safety, the new microwave had a dozen.

[PetersCreek]

That could be said about many "safety features" and worse yet, warning labels, these days. Especially dumb ones like "cup contains hot coffee" or "do not iron clothes while wearing them", which were probably inspired by legal teams rather than common sense.

...and not infrequently, inspired by legal teams in response to successful litigation of plaintiffs' cases that could may you face palm yourself into a TBI. I don't think there's a product on the planet that makes one "brainless"...or prevents it, if one is so inclined.

Things like SawStop, and car airbags and seatbelts can save lives (or fingers), but some things like the nanny features in newer cars (blind spot/collision warning for instance) can cause some people to become complacent or even careless, reducing safety.

I have to disagree with your wording here. I don't consider blind spot/collision warning systems to be "nanny features." They extend my sensory range, detecting things I cannot physically see and/or sooner than I can see them. That's another layer of safety, in my book. I also don't agree that such features "cause" complacency. I consider that a choice in behavior and it's a choice I don't really get. Why invest in an improved safety feature only to engage in practices that make you less safe should that new feature underperform or outright fail? It's just easier in the moment, I suppose.

I suppose SawStop could do the same, but if it were me, I'd be just as nervous around that spinning blade as on any other power saw.

The same could be said for spinning car wheels.

[geonuc]

I suppose SawStop could do the same, but if it were me, I'd be just as nervous around that spinning blade as on any other power saw.

I like to think I wasn't 'nervous' when using my previous table saw but rather exceptionally careful. But the habits I cultivated with that saw I carry over to using my SawStop. After all, activating the saw's safety feature is still quite expensive.

[Noclevername]

That could be said about many "safety features" and worse yet, warning labels, these days. Especially dumb ones like "cup contains hot coffee" or "do not iron clothes while wearing them", which were probably inspired by legal teams rather than common sense.

Things like SawStop, and car airbags and seatbelts can save lives (or fingers), but some things like the nanny features in newer cars (blind spot/collision warning for instance) can cause some people to become complacent or even careless, reducing safety. I suppose SawStop could do the same, but if it were me, I'd be just as nervous around that spinning blade as on any other power saw.

I tend to say to myself when I'm feeling cynical (which these days is 99.999% of the time), warning labels interfere with natural selection.

Nature has selectively shaped humans into a species that protects its members. We are social animals, not Social Darwinists; We require cooperation and compassion as well as individual competition.

[21st Century Schizoid Man]

After all, activating the saw's safety feature is still quite expensive.

I had to look up this particular product before realising what "activating the saw's safety feature" meant . . .

[Delvo]

Is it because you actually read the book first?
I find many films disappointing when I have read the book.

Lots of people say that, but I'm the opposite. I find video generally better for fiction, and text interspersed with any needed illustrations better for non-fiction. Fiction writers' verbal habits tend to get annoying to me. Fiction authors are also very prone to bloat as if they think a book's mass is an indicator of quality, whereas video forces its creators to be efficient. (If other people's experiences in school at a young age are like mine, the tendency for verbal bloat in fiction is teachers' fault, for constantly prompting their young students to use more & more descriptiveness.) Video also gives its creator more stops to pull out to make certain scenes extremely evocative in ways that text just can't, making text feel cold & empty by comparison. (In fact, the last time I was saying this to somebody in real life, I showed that person a couple of favorite scenes that had made noteworthy use of video-exclusive tools like camera angles & movements, cuts, and music, that books just don't have, and said at the end, "You can't do that with text".)

Coincidentally/ironically, although "The Lord Of The Rings" is a classic example of the bloat that makes me dislike so much written fiction, three of the "scenes" in written fiction that have affected me the most like a great cinematic moment would were by Tolkienn: one in "The Return Of The King" and two in "The Silmarillion". And those might be good examples of why it doesn't happen much for me: "The Silmarillion" was written in a style that practically nothing else is written in, even by the same author, and that one paragraph in TROTK featured a sudden departure in style from the rest of the same book. But the more like "the usual" the writing style is, the more dull and burdensome it tends to become.

[profloater]

Hah. You reminded of a couple old stories - once when a friend received an electric pencil sharpener, much hilarity ensued when we read the surprisingly long instructions on how to use it. Like: Sharpener must be plugged in for use. Here are electrical safety tips. Here’s how you insert a pencil. Insert only the wood end, DO NOT insert the metal and eraser end. It is only intended for wood pencils. DO NOT insert mechanical pencils or pens, or anything else aside from standard wood pencils. And so on.

Another example, we kept an Amana microwave oven for a very long time - it was well built and it took a long time before new microwaves did anything new. We still had the Amana’s instruction book, and I compared with the new microwave’s. The new instruction book was much shorter, except for one thing - the Amana had a couple of pages on safety, the new microwave had a dozen.

It is easy to laugh at those safety pages but if you sell stuff, especially in America, you discover that labels and safety instruction count a lot in law suits, people do strange things and sometimes deliberately to make a compensation claim. Of course the situation becomes self defeating when no one reads the walls of small print except that it was there to read if you think you were damaged. As a trivial example we supply filter cartridges in paper wrappers. We had to drive all day to a customer whose system had stopped working, to find they had put the filter in place with the wrapper on. The wrapper did have instructions already but now in our manuals we have a sentence about it, that makes people laugh. Just like the pencil sharpener supplier.

[profloater]

Nature has selectively shaped humans into a species that protects its members. We are social animals, not Social Darwinists; We require cooperation and compassion as well as individual competition.

I am not sure your hypothesis survives the test of evidence, if you accept history as evidence. We cooperate, yes , but we are tribal, being tribal has huge Darwinian advantages but is ever so limiting when it gets crowded.

[Gillianren]

Yes. On one of the food groups I frequent, I get annoyed at the occasional negative responses some folks feel they need to share in response to someone else posting "I dined at [restaurant x] and really enjoyed it" or "I made my favorite dish of [x] - who else likes it?" Particularly with that last one, people sometimes respond with a vomit emoji, which I find to be unconscionably bad manners.

It absolutely is bad manners! Look, as established, there are a ton of foods I don't like. When there are conversations where people are talking about how much they like them, I don't say anything. I feel like people have missed how to do that. If there's a discussion where my dislike matters, I'll mention it. If people are talking about how much they love something, they don't need my "yeah, that makes me throw up."

[Noclevername]

I am not sure your hypothesis survives the test of evidence, if you accept history as evidence. We cooperate, yes , but we are tribal, being tribal has huge Darwinian advantages but is ever so limiting when it gets crowded.

But tribes are social entities, groups of cooperating individuals. So you're supporting my hypothesis (which as I said, includes competition).

[profloater]

But tribes are social entities, groups of cooperating individuals. So you're supporting my hypothesis (which as I said, includes competition).

Tribes then kill each other, which is not very cooperative, except for the winning tribe.

[grant hutchison]

Tribes then kill each other, which is not very cooperative, except for the winning tribe.

"Vaccine nationalism" applies.

Grant Hutchison

[Noclevername]

Tribes then kill each other, which is not very cooperative, except for the winning tribe.

Is that all they do? There's never intertribal cooperation? No wonder we never left the caves.

[Jens]

Is that all they do? There's never intertribal cooperation? No wonder we never left the caves.

It's kind of funny, because you said:

So you're supporting my hypothesis (which as I said, includes competition).

And Profloater said:

We cooperate, yes , but we are tribal,

So you are both accepting that we are both social and competitive, which I think makes sense, and I'm not quite sure what the discussion is about.

Personally, just to add another point, I think a lot of the difference between us and other animals (say wild dogs or wolves) that also compete while being cooperative, is that we have language, so that we can explain things and set rules, which other animals cannot do. I think a lot of the reason that we got out of the caves, and they didn't, is because we have that ability to create culture and systems.

[Noclevername]

So you are both accepting that we are both social and competitive, which I think makes sense, and I'm not quite sure what the discussion is about.

Profloater's reply in 4489 was exclusionary. "Tribes then kill each other" is only one of many outcomes that occur every day.

I'm being nitpicky, I know, but I live in a culture and region which vastly overemphasizes competition over cooperation, so I'm a bit weary of doing so.

[Extravoice]

I order something from a company that I don’t do business with very often. I immediately get flooded with marketing emails. They come at least once a day.

After a short while, I get sufficiently annoyed to find the “unsubscribe” button, and all emails stop.

You’d think that someone in marketing would realize that multiple emails per day is too many.
Or maybe most people want that? That’s hard to believe.

[21st Century Schizoid Man]

I order something from a company that I don’t do business with very often. I immediately get flooded with marketing emails. They come at [i]least[/] once a day.

After a short while, I get sufficiently annoyed to find the “unsubscribe” button, and all emails stop.

You’d think that someone in marketing would realize that multiple emails per day is too many.
Or maybe most people want that? That’s hard to believe.

I'm sure they realise it's annoying. But, the cost of sending the emails is close to zero.

When you do decide you need a product they offer, are you going to buy it from them (because you have the link at-the-ready in your email inbox), or from someone else (because these people have annoyed you too much)?

I guess they're banking on the former, which may or may not be an accurate assessment.

[Swift]

I order something from a company that I don’t do business with very often. I immediately get flooded with marketing emails. They come at least once a day.

After a short while, I get sufficiently annoyed to find the “unsubscribe” button, and all emails stop.

You’d think that someone in marketing would realize that multiple emails per day is too many.
Or maybe most people want that? That’s hard to believe.

There are multiple companies that do that. 21st Century Schizoid Man points out the conflicting sides, but for me it usually creates a permanent dislike of the company that I then go out of my way to avoid.

What I find even more annoying and bizarre are the not-for-profits that do that, trying to get contributions from me. There are multiple charities, some that do good things, that I will never again contribute to because of their fundraising techniques.

[Torsten]

One of the charities I support started sending useless (to me) stuff, like pins, fridge magnets, greeting card collections. I phoned them and explained that they were going to lose me for wasting my donations this way. I also told them that if I were in charge, I'd fire whoever made that decision. They took me off that particular promo list, though I suspect they continued the practice with other donors.

A week ago, now some years since my last rant, a charity sent me a silly pin and request for a donation. I just gave them a substantial amount in December. I just tossed it this time.

[Van Rijn]

I order something from a company that I don’t do business with very often. I immediately get flooded with marketing emails. They come at least once a day.

After a short while, I get sufficiently annoyed to find the “unsubscribe” button, and all emails stop.

You’d think that someone in marketing would realize that multiple emails per day is too many.
Or maybe most people want that? That’s hard to believe.

Same here. I unsubscribe from (e)mailings where the company sends them too often. On the other hand, if they send uncommon and interesting mailings, I keep reading and sometimes it even results in me buying more from them. But most send far too often, and when I do read, am rarely impressed. I unsubscribe quickly probably 90% of the time. It strikes me as a poor marketing strategy.

[profloater]

It's kind of funny, because you said:



And Profloater said:



So you are both accepting that we are both social and competitive, which I think makes sense, and I'm not quite sure what the discussion is about.

Personally, just to add another point, I think a lot of the difference between us and other animals (say wild dogs or wolves) that also compete while being cooperative, is that we have language, so that we can explain things and set rules, which other animals cannot do. I think a lot of the reason that we got out of the caves, and they didn't, is because we have that ability to create culture and systems.

I lost track of what we were discussing but Arthur Koestler was right about the “followship” trait which binds tribes to a leader, it is more than cooperation , it is individuals forfeiting their best course to follow a leader. That leads to tribes in conflict and bigger scale wars too, as any peep at history must confirm. Tribalism, nationalism, racism, a spectrum of non cooperation with other people who are really the same as us. And it becomes reciprocal so easily.