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Comment by kerkeslager | Hacker News Reader

What I'm saying is that your perception of quality is not actually objective quality.

This car has dents but those don't matter. Full price for you. Car still gets you from a to b just fine. This jacket has some holes and few stains but it will still keep you warm.

Effectively, there is no difference between an apple and one with a bruise. I still get the same nutrition and taste, most other differences being unimportant.

A jacket with a hole has massive loss of effectiveness, and I don't receive a new jacket to wear each day.

A car with a dent has significant loss of value, not that it's something I'm terribly concerned with, I run all cars until they die.

>Effectively, there is no difference between an apple and one with a bruise. I still get the same nutrition and taste, most other differences being unimportant.

That's simply not true. The bruises become rot spots and before getting there they introduce oxidation which affects taste. The shelf life is then also diminished not only for the bruised apple, but for any that are nearby.

Relatively speaking, I think the bruise on an apple is actually a measurably greater decrease in (relative) value than the dents in a car.

You could compare it to rust instead.

I know this isn't the point you're making, but the right dent patterns can increase fuel efficiency and make cars more desirable to some buyers.

Ok, now I need to know about these dent connoisseurs who measure their impact on fuel efficiency.

I can understand that for a crooked carrot, but for example a tomato with broken skin actually gets bad pretty quickly.

Neither is yours. But if yours is satisfied with the food you can get by ordering online, you're free to order online.

It doesn't sound like they are claiming that their perceptions are objective.

In your previous post, you trip all over yourself acknowledging that their preferences are valid.

It's obvious enough that's what they are driving at; they want a shopping service that accounts for their preferences.

If the vast majority of shoppers perceive a product as lower quality it is, almost by definition, worth less in a market. Quality is a very tricky idea to pin down (read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance if you'd like to hear a lot on the idea) and claiming that your own highly biased opinion on the matter is what counts as "objective" is a pretty bold claim.

This is true in some cases, but not most.

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