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Comment by colordrops | Hacker News Reader

It's not an upgrade though. Well, perhaps for the "industry" it's an upgrade, but it's a downgrade for the game itself.

It’s an upgrade of it makes bowling alleys less expensive, or helps keep existing ones in business or helps open up the market for new ones. We are losing bowling alleys at a rapid clip, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good here.

Some people just want to play a traditional game with no strings attached.

If an economic system continuously gets in the way of having nice things, the problem isn't the nice things.

Community-centric recreation spaces are getting squeezed out in general, because fewer people have disposable income. And it's not just bowling alleys, with the complex equipment. Skating rinks are basically just a warehouse with some lines on the ground, and they've been going away too.

Disposable income is not down (except from the pandemic). It's near an all-time high, like the economy in general. https://www.statista.com/statistics/710215/us-disposable-inc...

If skating rinks are going away I would bet they are being replaced by entertainment for people with _more_ disposable income, like trampoline parks. It's a rich country.

It requires account. Also, average does not say much about actual number of people with increased disposable income, that's what matters on this market. What about median?

That says disposable income per capita is up, but nothing about how it is distributed. Give Elon and a few others an extra 50 billion each and that will bump the national average even if everyone else goes slightly backwards.

So look at median, not average disposable income.

Some people just want to play the game at all, but the nearest bowling alley still in business is 30-40 miles away.

Getout.gif

It's a downgrade for everyone else.

> We are losing bowling alleys at a rapid clip, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good here.

This isn't a case of perfect being the enemy of good. The strings aren't good. If that's the future of bowling, then I'm not bowling in the future and no longer care if bowling alleys go away.

Maybe, but if maintaining the current standard of the game requires the sacrifice of multiple human lives each year then it doesn't seem like there is much of an argument against downgrading.

That's a false dichotomy, it doesn't "require" the sacrifice, they could definitely make the machines more safe, or make working on them safer, but likely they were made before worker safety was considered so critical and "pinsetter mechanic" is probably too niche to get special work safety provisions.

Yeah, this isn't Vietnam. This is bowling. There are rules.

They have made them safer—by reducing the complexity of the machines and the frequency of necessary human intervention by adding strings to pull the pins back into place.

Yeah, that's not what is meant above by "machines", they mean machines that have equivalent function, not machines that result in a different game.

Looking at accident reports, it sounds like there are some easy changes, adding guards to the machines and changing industry practices to de-energize the machines during the maintenance activity: https://www.atlantictraining.com/blog/bowling-alley-worker-s...

You are presenting the classic logical fallacy of

We must do something

This is a thing

Therefore we must do this.

There are other ways they could make the machine safer that don't involve adding strings and thereby changing the game.

They could make them safer without making the game worse, though.

How many is multiple? The only information I can find says it's 4 a year

https://raisedbyturtles.org/bowling-deaths-double

It's even better when supposedly one of these deaths occurred due to "Extreme bowling" which apparently involves a half pipe. So yeah, this comes off as extremely misleading and just for clicks.

You'd probably save more lives banning all the beer and unhealthy food served at the alley, or by banning sports with a higher death toll, like soccer.

Strikes me as a way for alleys to operate cheaper by several magnitudes, and then just cover that up in safety rather than say "look people don't want to pay enough to bowl with machines"

Is there a world where 4 is not more than one?

My god people still post worthless sarcastic crap like this?

Multiple can range from 2 to 2 million and magnitude matters.

I'm sorry, but you were the one suggesting that 4 deaths somehow didn't suffice to meet the criteria of "multiple deaths" which seems absurd and in defiance of any common use of the language.

Ban them both and go back to pinboys, I say. Best of both worlds (free pins and no fatalities).

And employment opportunities galore!

There's only one hobby that we are more than happy to give a blood offering for, and it's not bowling.

What hobby is that?

Guns.

There is no sacrifice. It's negligence.

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