Hacker News Reader

Comment by lainga | Hacker News Reader

>Rail stations, whether in Japan or elsewhere, are also great places to see “nudge theory” at work.

Gentle nudges, like ultrasonic deterrents to keep teenagers away with "a look of confusion or discomfort, and often a cry of urusai! (Loud!)"...?

View on HN

Those 'ultrasonic deterrents' should be completely illegal to deploy on/near any publicly accessible property. Having run into them many times over the years here in the US they're horrifically loud, painful, and less of a deterrent and more a punishment for having less-degraded hearing.

Completely agreed. There's this road I sometimes have in my running route where one of the residents there put one of these things in their front yard. It hurts my ears and, I'm afraid, my longer term hearing if it happens often enough. It's really loud.

Who'd think it okay to inflict this sort of thing on people of _any_ age? It's also a blatant attempt at age discrimination.

I used to go to the same food court nearly everyday for lunch during work. They had birds wander in, little sparrows, that would peck at the crumbs. Not that many of them if any at all.

They deployed a constant sweeping high pitched noise emitter to combat the birds and it's impossible to be in the area now. I just can't imagine how they're legal or even sensible.

I wonder if perhaps it wasn't a ploy to get the court to slow down and get the tenants to leave so they can redevelop it. It's been a local institution for some time.

Agreed. I'm well beyond being a teenager, but I still hear these things. Some stores put them near their entrances and it's never a pleasant surprise.

Indeed. I'm 34 and can still hear them.

I remember riding on a train in Japan when some schoolgirls sitting across from me were just chatting in an excited way...nothing that seemed out of place, but man did they get it. Things seemed fine to me, especially on a hot summer day in an uncrowded train with the windows down (plenty of atmospheric noise).

All of a sudden a conductor (not sure if you call him that, he was in the back end of the car) popped out of his enclosure and yelled at them like they had just trashed his living space. He did use the word "urusai," but more than that (as is often the case in Japanese) his tone was just _dark_, fast, and loud.

All I could think was that he put on that intervention for us few foreigners who were being pretty quiet, and who really weren't bothered, but I still have no idea.

> All I could think was that he put on that intervention for us few foreigners

Nah. In Japanese culture, it's simply considered rude to be loud in trains.

Still. I've never seen a conductor yell at anyone for being loud, especially in the cities. Maybe it happens in the inaka...

Never seen a conductor do it, but I've seen other passengers lay into someone for being too rowdy or (especially) talking on the phone. Usually following a comically obvious build-up of red-faced anger over 5-10 minutes or so.

Anecdotally I've heard that social censure is far more common and ruthless in the women's-only cars.

That just sounds like an Asian in parental mode to me. Sounds just like my mom or dad when they've had enough. (Seriously, there was always a part of me thinking, "Why does Mom/Dad sound like they're in a Samurai drama?" I'm not even Japanese!)

It's possible they were talking about you in a less than flattering way thinking you don't understand Japanese, and the conductor had enough of it.

Was this outside of a major metro area? The tone and conjugation of the word is surprising.

That's in a separate section of the article. "Point and Call" isn't nudge theory either.

These were sadly pretty common in the UK for a while, at the height of the ASBO-plague. I believe they're called 'mosquitos'.

This is great we need those everywhere.

I hear someone invented a special light which is uncomfortably hot when it interacts with darker skin, but doesn't (usually) affect those who are fair-skinned.[1] Statistics show that locations that deploy these lights have fewer minor crimes.[2]

Do you think we should deploy these lights along with the squealers? If not, then why not -- what is different?

[1] Not actually true (thank goodness). Fictional example was created for illustrative purposes only.

[2] Not actually true (because the lights aren't real). But if they were real, this would almost certainly be true. Among other things, if you drive off a percentage of the population, then it decreases the number of people, and thus the number of crimes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com