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Comment by m0zg | Hacker News Reader

BTW, the only reason why consumer vacuum cleaners are so loud is because consumers associate loudness with suction power.

"Backpack" style commercial vacuum cleaners have more suction, and are barely audible in comparison.

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I stand corrected. It was much louder than a consumer vacuum but my analogy skills are weak.

Your analogy skills were strong, because analogy is rooted in myth, not fact. Achilles did not actually have an Achilles tendon because Achilles did not exist

There does not have to be an increadibly loud functional industrial vacuum cleaner, for figuratively everyone to get your analogy, because the Herculean reality of vacuum cleaners is that you cannot clean an augean stable of lego on the floor, without a lot of noise. If you get my analogy.

To continue the pedantry, I don't think we know for sure that Achilles didn't exist. Troy certainly did, and we have the Iliad to thank for knowing to look for it.

No, we have Schliemann to thank, for digging through it in his lust for anachronistically Indy-Jonesing the archeology. Troy only exists because Schliemann stole the gold. Otherwise its just some hill in Turkey.

I know the story...Schliemann went looking for Troy because the Illiad told him it existed.

Didn't work on Ararat. False in unum, false in omnibus. Anyway, he went to the wrong hill first. But overall yes, myth informs reality sometimes. Shame he didn't find the bones of the giant wooden platypus the Greek ice cream salesmen hid in.

I don't know about backpack style vacuums (the few I've seen seem plenty loud), but the idea that manufacturers deliberately create loud vacuums to make them seem more powerful is ridiculous. There is an entire market segment of vacuums that are marketed as 'quiet', so there is plenty of demand for quiet vacuums. There is simply a trade off between suction / loudness / price, and various models make different trade offs (corresponding to various points in the market).

That some people want quiet vacuums is not proof that some people don't want loud vacuums. Cars and motorcycles are good examples of markets where you see both deliberately quiet and deliberately loud examples.

This doesn't seem any more ridiculous than companies setting a higher price and then always having the item on sale. I think JCPenny famously tried simply lowering their prices and sales went down. I guarantee if you ask the average person "would you rather companies cut the BS and just lower their prices rather than have items on sale in perpetuity" they would of course say lower the prices. But as the anecdote would demonstrate, that isn't how things actually play out.

The point is, when it comes to consumer behavior, I don't think anyone has a clue what to expect. It would not surprise one bit if vacuum companies make louder vacuums because the consumer thinks it works better.

Is BMW piping in fake "engine noise" through the speakers also "ridiculous" in your opinion?

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