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Comment by gizmo | Hacker News Reader

Of course there are "reasonable justifications" for the shitty status quo, but that's kind of the point. Things are shitty for reasons but not for good reasons. The author points to Japan to illustrate that you do get measurably better results when people habitually try to do good work. We're not actually doomed to have crappy furniture, flimsy and buggy appliances, byzantine legal codes, ugly architecture, and hostile infrastructure forever. This society is the product of the choices we've made collectively and if we made different choices we could have a much better (or much worse) society.

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But street lights don't have to use harsh 3000 kelvin LEDs, there are warm light LEDs (2400-2700 kelvin). For example, these lights are widely available for home, yet most people just buy the 3000K LED bulbs because (IME) it doesn't occur to them that there is a strong aesthetic (and health) difference between these colors. i.e. They don't care.

Besides the color temperature, they are way too bright. It's like daylight in front of my house since they changed the lamps.

A lot of America especially has an issue with too many lights, and the lights themselves are too bright relative to the population. Found what I thought was a cool image on Wikipedia Commons while searching the subject that has the light use relative to the population density. Green's lots of light use, red is lots of population density. America's bright green light use. Yellow is fairly equivalent light use to population density. [1]

[1] Light Use vs Population Density, WP Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Earth_li...

They shine through my windows at night and are truly horrific.

They’re down the entire alleyway behind my place, and a walk to the grocery store at 7pm during the winter makes your body and mind think it’s sunrise.

It's probably getting better but the amber-colored LEDs used to be rather inefficient. I've also heard that white lighting can slightly improve reaction times of those in traffic and leads to slightly clearer captures for security cameras. I personally think these benefits do not outweigh how extremely ugly and unwelcoming they are, but "city officials just don't care" is not what led to the adoption of white LED street lighting at all.

A lot of wildlife, like birds, bats, insects etc. are really confused by white light. There are some nordic countries which are experimenting with red street lights in outer districts which are showing great promise. (Don't have a reference atm but should be googleable)

> Things are shitty for reasons but not for good reasons.

I dunno. At the first problem, impeding cyclists that want to merge into a walkway zooming at 20mph without paying enough attention to even see their lane is ending is a quite good reason.

Maybe he should be asking for some "cyclist-calming" measure instead, so they will slow down before not being able to make into the walkway.

There’s a huge difference between “impeding” and “causing you to fucking crash”.

Like, what an insane take.

Solution then is to add slowing features uphill from the cut over.

"We'll fix our hardware bugs in software" :)

Sort of suggested by the article. The article mentions putting information up, so that bikers will not be surprised.

The curvet is not causing crash. Bikes have ability to slow down or even stop.

I'm not inclined to be sympathetic to cyclists, but the bike-murdering signpost right there is all the proof I need that there are people who hate them more than I do and that at least one of those people works in city government. I winced. It might actually be a felony, that act of transportation engineering. I'd at least listen to the prosecutor's theory of the crime.

It feels like zooming when you bicycle in those tight spaces at 9-12 km/h, which is a third of what you calld zooming. The point is that a collision at 12 km/h is pretty ok. The problem is that cyclists are always close to pedestrians so it feels unsafe even at slow speeds. The accident rate between cyclists and pedestrians are incredibly low so it is not really dangerous, but it feels like it.

The article explicitly says cyclists crash there going at ~30 km/h.

Crashes are another thing, cars going 100 mph here is probably proportionally the same as the people trying to take that at 30 km/h. The streetview of the location makes it even worse than I thought especially looking at the history of the spot.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/EcG7qKSNDDHjzWJk9

Hum... The bike lane seems to be designed to fill space and make the street run better, instead of being designed for being useful for riding bikes.

I can see why people get angry about it. But still, the article is asking for the wrong solution. And yeah, the people crashing on that fence at 30 km/h would just die hit by a car a few meters down if the article's fix was implemented.

What I read when I read about the bicycle lane is that bike lanes were a requirement, the user persona was assigned to a casual recreational rider on a small low speed recreational (<24" wheels) (aka kids under 10), when in reality, that hill is used by a road cyclist commuter, would only be used by a confident cyclist that close to traffic on that steepb of hill.

It's not that the traffic engineer didn't care about a quality product, they didn't care to research who bikes (and have car brain), and have never traveled out of the US, to the Netherlands, or met a cyclist.

Yeah, my first reaction was "you should not move onto the sidewalk if you cant break and control the speed". Unless it is some kind of abandoned place where no one ever walks anyway.

I am cyclist by the way. It is just that looking at picture, it is not exactly super difficult turn, if you have those breaks.

Directing bicycles on to the sidewalk doesn't even make sense in the first place. It just makes for pedestrian conflicts, difficult maneuvers, and automobile drivers are definitely not looking for cyclists on the sidewalk.

IMO, the switch from sodium lamps to LED lamps (one of the article's gripes) was for a good reason: lower use of electricity. I also happen to think that the light from sodium lamps looked ugly--much worse than a properly working LED lamp--but maybe that's a personal opinion. (I would also question the study that "showed" white light reduced melatonin production, but that's a different issue.)

(Re "properly working LED": apparently many street lamps in the US were built by a single company, and that company's bulbs are prone to turning purple over time. But that wasn't a reason not to make the switch back when, because at the time no one knew this would happen. It's being fixed now by replacing the purple bulbs with better quality LED bulbs.)

But is that even true? My mid-tier appliances are all great and I love my IKEA furniture. Some things suck some of the time. Other things don't.

> The author points to Japan to illustrate that you do get measurably better results when people habitually try to do good work

People in Japan habitually kill themselves because of their stupid work culture. Maybe that's not the best example.

That’s not limited to Japan.

And besides it’s a strange take to argue that you shouldn’t acknowledge good thing A because unrelated thing B is bad there.

Your rebuttal is dated. Suicide rates have been steadily declining in Japan and rising in the West to the point where suicides are actually less common in Japan than they are in the US currently. So perhaps it is a good example.

Related to the Japan thing, but one thing they don't do well is avoiding harsh white lights. It's far more common to find unpleasant fluorescent or LED lighting there than the US. The idea that warmer (or even dimmer) lights are preferable in most situations isn't a widespread opinion there apparently.

Cheaper lighting costs across an entire city are a very good reason.

"Ugly architecture" is subjective. A lot of architects care very much, but they follow the academic line and lack the imagination and empathy to understand why elements of that aesthetic are unpopular and impractical - a completely different problem, even if it causes related outcomes.

Bugs are easy to write and hard to fix. MBA culture as a whole is fixated on quick extractive shareholder returns, not on celebrating supreme engineering quality. MBAs care very much too, but not about the things the author (and probably most of us) care about.

Some people do care but are simply not good at their jobs.

Even if you do care, people will assume you don't. Anyone who's done direct customer facing work or even just sold stuff online will know that people love to nitpick.

And so on.

The problem is narcissism vs empathy. Caring means trying to have some insight the experience of others. Narcissism is on a scale from blank unawareness of others to outright hostility, whether overt or covert.

There's a lot more of the latter than the former around at the moment, and corporate and economic values provide some conveniently expedient justifications for it.

The problem, essentially, is that you can't rage against the dying of the light all by yourself. If you're an architect and badly want to build great housing your goals are frustrated every step of the way. By people who don't care enough to do all the little things that are necessary to make a building 5% better in 20 subtle ways. You can only fight indifference for so long before you're empty.

What is the point of lighting being cheap if it produces a city where people don't want to live? Good lighting isn't unaffordable either. Cities with good lighting actually exist! And yet people will insist shitty lighting is somehow necessary. It isn't.

> "Ugly architecture" is subjective.

I think this actually illustrates the author's point and gets at the heart of the cultural malaise we are experiencing. If everything is subjective, nothing can be improved because nothing can be better than something else.

But this isn't the case.

The Mona Lisa is objectively better than anything I have ever painted.

Architecture is no different.

Some buildings quite literally are better than others and we can scientifically study this [1]. We can recognize that all opinions are valid, but that some are better than others. We do this in daily life too, if you are in the ER and the trauma team comes and tells you their opinion on your condition, you will value that opinion over the opinion of the person outside waiting for a ride. Art, music, architecture - no different.

Tens of millions of people visit the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Why?

Religious reasons of course, but many visit simply to marvel at the wonderful architecture. Contrast that with Rocky City Church [2] here in Columbus where I live. A big, bland, gray "modern" building that as our standards have dropped to nothing (remember everything is subjective so nothing can be better than anything else) we have come to accept as the norm.

This is the Nobody Cares phase of not just architecture but society as well.

  [1] https://annsussman.com 
  [2]https://rockcitychurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/1.png

> The Mona Lisa is objectively better than anything I have ever painted.

No it isn't. If I saw one of your paintings and liked it better, there would be no way for you to prove me wrong. My opinion might be highly unpopular, but that wouldn't make it objectively incorrect.

How would you compare the two?

Then substitute one of my drawings (or paintings, if I painted) of a person. There's no way in the world that anyone--anyone!--would think mine were better. That's because mine are truly awful.

Even then, that's just an opinion that everyone shares. Objectivity isn't when everyone's subjective experiences align—it's when something exists independent of any subjective experience. If there were no humans at all, "beauty" would be meaningless. It's an inherently subjective property which humans ascribe to objects. Conversely, the Earth would still orbit the Sun, because gravity is objective.

In the same way I can state as an objective fact that Patrick Mahomes is way better than either of us at being a quarterback, I can say that any painting I've ever done isn't as good as the Mona Lisa.

A better quarterback wins games. What does a better painting do—win art contests? Judged by what objective criteria? Art doesn't have rules the way football does. A painting can't "win at being art"; each individual audience member either likes it or they don't.

> A better quarterback wins games.

Well, no, a better quarterback is just a member of a team. They don't dictate whether the team wins or not, they just contribute to it if they are good. Though we can't say whether a given quarterback is good or not because we don't have objective criteria to determine that. It's all relative and arbitrary - as I'm sure you'd agree with.

> What does a better painting do—win art contests?

Maybe? Why not?

> Judged by what objective criteria? Art doesn't have rules the way football does.

Football rules are arbitrary criteria, not objective.

> A painting can't "win at being art";

Why not? The Mona Lisa has the most viewers so maybe that means it is the best art?

There are many artists whose work was 'objectively' (that is, by consensus) bad until later when it became objectively good.

Some elements of beauty are objective. As in, they are hardwired into our brains.

Some cities are more beautiful than others. Prague is more beautiful than Detroit.

And yet, it's not as clear cut as that. There is some hardwired stuff in our brains (see e.g. the "bouba / kiki" effect [0]) but most people will agree that what is considered pretty, good, etc is cultural, not to mention changing over time - like architecture trends as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but also painting styles.

That said, a few posts back a commenter mentioned that the Mona Lisa is "objectively better" than anything they made; while I won't comment on aesthetics and appreciation, the assertion that the artist is more skilled in the arts than the poster is something definitely objectively true, simply because of education and experience. That's no guarantee that the outcome is better, but still.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect

To your point, though, I think as you look around at McMansions and Wal-Mart there's nothing architecturally redeeming about those structures besides efficiency in building and internal climate control. We know the architectural styles are bad and there are (again to your point about skill) scientific ways we can measure this (Ann Sussman's work).

If you look at historical architecture patterns (mostly pre-WWI) they mirror how art has changed over time.

It's not that Impressionism came about and Renaissance became shit, it's that both are good and important stylistic contributions.

It's not that Gothic architecture came about then all the Romanesque stuff sucked. Both were good and unique.

We run into the same problem as "all art is equal" when we tend to express the belief that because we live in the time period we're complaining about that if only we waited a few hundred years we would recognize that our current building patterns are actually really good. That's just not the case.

What would you say to an idiosyncratic person who prefers Detroit to Prague? "Actually most people disagree because of their brains?" That hardly makes the Detroit-liker's opinion "incorrect."

They might not be good reasons to you, but that is not the same thing as not caring. If someone cooks something that without salt for health reasons, that doesn't mean they don't care about salt as much as me.

Eh, I think as always is still just comes down to resource contention right at the root of the issues. We still all monk e, some things will never change.

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