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[Frumple]

Talisman Emperor, when you're saying things like

It’s only a distance of 5,000 km, I’ll surely be able to find you.

I get the feeling either your writer or your translator is playing fast and very loose with the concept of distance.

_{For reference, that's a bit over 3,000 miles, and the USA is about 2,600 miles wide and less that tall. That "only" is larger than the continental US, and it's being stated a surety to be able to find someone in it.}

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

Something is sexist simply when someone is treated differently because of their sex(except the extremely few cases in which there actually is an important difference, such as keeping pregnant women out of dangerous professions.) which includes but is not limited to prejudiced beliefs about sex, and harmful actions against people because of their sex.

I don't think that we should say that it's bad to not completely ignore sex. It still carries some statistical information.

That is an awfully constructed sentence :p

I am also tired. From the context, though, you think that we shouldn’t ignore sex ‘cause it still has some, if negligible, application?

Yes. The definition of sexism that Pikachu gave is binary and one-drop (is there a better word for this? this might be too racial). I was thinking of an Ideal Bayesian Mind, and how it would take all information into account and consider it proportionally to its strength and uncertainty to construct a maximally-accurate model of reality. That's the optimal mind, along one dimension, and I think it should be good to approximate it. Ridiculous thought experiment - if I have to pick a man or a woman to lift a heavy weight, and all I know is that they were randomly selected from the world's population, I would pick the man. That's carefully set up so that all else is equal, which it almost never is, but as we get better at modeling the world (with computers, perhaps), we will probably reach the point where we can increase the accuracy of the social-interaction model by including a sex variable which slightly adjusts the expected propensity to smile, or something like that. (If we're not already there!)

TL;DR: most people treat sex as carrying more information than it does, but it still carries a non-zero amount of information even in non-medical contexts. Adjust downward instead of banning the use entirely.

[milo christiansen]

(Mutters quietly about being able to play PSP game isos direclty off the memory stick if you use CFW.

I'm sure both Sony and Nintendo would be horrified, but I drug the old system down and managed to get the SNES version of Donkey Kong Country 3 running on it. Amazingly, it seems the 11 year old battery still holds a good charge, or at least it seems to last a decent amount of time. On the other hand, my 2GB memeory stick seems to not work, but the 1GB one still seems good.

Wow, I remember when that 1GB stick cost me more than $30...

[smjjames]

Don’t know if I should put this in the AmeriPol thread or here, maybe both? http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2018/05/31/school-shootings-this-cannon-fires-unbelievable-ammo-to-blast-through-walls-and-help-rescue-victims.html

I don’t care what side of the gun debate you’re on, schools aren’t fortresses and I’m pretty sure there’s usually planning before using it and by the time the siege engine squad arrived, it’d be too late.

[Reelya]

That FOX article actually reads like a paid infomercial for the company that makes the cannon.

For example, cannons could be positioned in advance to protect 4th of July crowds. If a terrorist drove at the crowd, the cannon could blast the water bottle that would tear through the vehicle and stop the attack.

A blunt projectile that can "tear through" a charging car? And we're going to position these all around large crowds of people?

I'd be more worried about one of these cannons discharging and firing a wall-busting blunt rocket into a packed crowd. What would the stopping distance of that actually be?

[smjjames]

It’s still a wtf that they’re (both Fox and the person who came up with the idea) even entertaining the idea at all.

And yeah, whoever fires that at a car in the middle of a crowd better hope that they have savant level aiming skills.

[Frumple]

BK what are you doing

4 piece chicken nugget, 1.29 (~.32 per)

10 piece 1.69 (.16)

20 piece 4.99 (.24)

Like okay. The smallest amount being the most expensive is normal. The largest being 150% the next smallest down is not. It's cheaper to buy two tens than one twenty. Three ten orders is roughly the same price as a single twenty.

I can guess it's a (functioning, presumably) trap for the inattentive but the pricing scheme on your menu shouldn't be making me look at it funny, dagnabbit!

[Reelya]

I can guess it's a (functioning, presumably) trap for the inattentive but the pricing scheme on your menu shouldn't be making me look at it funny, dagnabbit!

There are some examples where adding in additional crappy choices that no logical person would ever make can change people's decision making about the remaining choices. There was a TED talk about this.

One example was for a magazine subscription. The choices were something like

(1) $30 digital subscription
(2) $125 print subscription
(3) $125 print plus digital subscription.

Clearly, choice 3 is a dominant choice over choice 2. People think "well I might as well get the digital as well since it costs no more". In this scenario, about 2/3rds of people express the preference for choice 3. However, tests were done with removing the "useless" choice 2, and suddenly, 80% choose choice 1 instead. i.e. nobody capable of reading ever picks choice 2, yet the presence of choice 2 changes how we evaluate the quality of the remaining choices.

There were a number of other examples given. One was

(1) All-expenses-paid Rome holiday for 1 week
(2) All-expenses-paid Paris holiday for 1 week

Asked which one to choose, respondents were pretty much 50/50. However, they did the experiment with a third choice, one of either:

(3a) All-expenses-paid Rome holiday for 1 week. Except coffee with breakfast costs 2 euros.
(3b) All-expenses-paid Paris holiday for 1 week. Except coffee with breakfast costs 2 euros.

In other words, they added the smallest and least-consequential negative thing that you could add to an all-expenses paid trip to Rome or Paris. However, test subjects shown (3a) suddenly love Paris with coffee, more than paris-without-coffee, but paradoxically, also more than Rome-with-coffee. If you showed them (3b) instead, which is rome-without-coffee, then they love regular Rome and don't like Paris any more. This is how fucked we are at making decisions.

Another example was they showed two photos of guys to women, got them to pick the most handsome. Again 50/50. But then they made "ugly" versions of both guys. Call the guys Adam and Bill. If you saw "ugly Adam" then regular Adam looks better, even better than Bill, and if you saw "ugly Bill" then Bill looks better, even better than Adam. So the take away is that your wing-man should be a slightly uglier version of whatever you look like.

Now let's consider the BK menu.

First, notice that there's not much difference between the 4 piece pack and 10 piece pack in price. So people would go "might as well get a 10 piece pack then". But also notice that two 10 piece packs have the same amount as a 20 piece pack, despite being much cheaper. Now, not only have you convinced yourself that a 10 piece pack is better value than a 4 piece pack, if you only buy one pack you start to feel you're missing out because you didn't get 20 pieces. So, maybe you only wanted 4 pieces to start with, but you've talked yourself into buying 20 now. i.e. nobody in their right mind ever picks Option 3, but it's still there for a reason, because it makes the other options look better, and causes people to buy extra so as to not "miss out" on the "saving".

[Rolan7]

To my shame, I actually didn't notice the 20pc were more expensive the first couple times.  I was somewhat blinded by how much cheaper they were than Wendy's nuggets (previously a favorite treat food) and slightly tastier.

I only found out because I was with a friend, who pointed out that the cashier rang up the 10pc twice, and we looked at the prices and figured it out.  Very kind of that employee (:

[Reelya]

That might validate that you're not in fact supposed to get the 20-pack and the mere presence is designed as social engineering. The people who come up with fast-food pricing are certainly familiar with the research I mentioned from the TED talk, they'd be the first people to jump on those results and start tweaking their pricing.

Someone else on here was mentioning not long ago that the middle-sized pack of something else was inexplicably cheaper per gram, than the big one, too. They wrote that off as an "error" too. Perhaps the real goal is in fact to nudge you up from a small to a medium?

[hector13]

Starver, it was.

I always thought it was to get folk to buy the large version, evidently they’re changing that.

Like, they would have small soda for 1.99, and a large soda for 3.99, and a medium soda would be, like, 3.50 to get people to buy the large.

[JoshuaFH]

I'm the type of guy to buy the Buttermilk Tenders, and go "Oh, Mcnuggets? How quaint." ignoring the fact that I basically just ripped myself off with overpriced nuggets.

[Reelya]

Starver, it was.

I always thought it was to get folk to buy the large version, evidently they’re changing that.

Like, they would have small soda for 1.99, and a large soda for 3.99, and a medium soda would be, like, 3.50 to get people to buy the large.

That's the traditional way you'd do pricing: cheaper per volume as you upsize, which has been around for at least 60 year or more.

However this new stuff is based on more recent research about ways thinking can be distorted. For example, the 10 nuggets is less than half the 20 nuggets, so if you only buy one lot of 10 you get "FOMO": fear of missing out, since you didn't get two packs and "beat the system". If the 10-pack was the biggest on offer, you might only buy one pack and think you got a good deal, but over-priced 20-pack is there, then the 10-pack seems cheaper but you also get the effect where people buy two packs more often and get the "satisfaction" of having gotten a 20-pack for "less".

EDIT: And this is clearly no accident: fast food chain pricing is one of the most rigorously studied areas of marketing that's out there. There's no chance that BK made a mistake if that's their standardized pricing.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/priceless/200912/decoding-fast-food-menus

Fast-food menus are among the most rigorously tested products of our consumer culture.
...
 In many cases, menus and prices are intended to nudge consumers into ordering more than they might have otherwise.
...
people instinctively favor a middle choice, figuring it's safer.

... which is what I was saying about the BK thing. They made the middle option the best, but also made it so that buying two of them was still more value-for-money than the top option.

[redwallzyl]

Starver, it was.

I always thought it was to get folk to buy the large version, evidently they’re changing that.

Like, they would have small soda for 1.99, and a large soda for 3.99, and a medium soda would be, like, 3.50 to get people to buy the large.

That's the traditional way you'd do pricing: cheaper per volume as you upsize, which has been around for at least 60 year or more.

However this new stuff is based on more recent research about ways thinking can be distorted. For example, the 10 nuggets is less than half the 20 nuggets, so if you only buy one lot of 10 you get "FOMO": fear of missing out, since you didn't get two packs and "beat the system". If the 10-pack was the biggest on offer, you might only buy one pack and think you got a good deal, but over-priced 20-pack is there, then the 10-pack seems cheaper but you also get the effect where people buy two packs more often and get the "satisfaction" of having gotten a 20-pack for "less".

It's this kind of stuff that makes me laugh everyone time someone starts talking about rational consumers, and markets making the best things win and all the bull.

[overseer05-15]

Steam recently removed a game, Active Shooter, where you could play as an active school shooter. What I want to know is how the hell it got on Steam in the first place so that it needed to be removed.