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Comment by rjayatilleka | Hacker News Reader

That snippet would make sense if it was automated. But the front half of Uber's tweet was directly about the situation -meaning they acknowledged terrorists were in the area and then jacked up prices. That's terrible PR. Much better to say the price surge was automatic, and only have no tweet or an automated tweet

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Uber seems to be convinced that surge pricing is a good idea. In a purely rational world, I agree with them. Higher prices means more drivers means more capacity when it's needed. But humans aren't rational, and what sounds good in a dispassionate analysis looks like profiteering in the heat of the moment. They don't seem to really grasp this. It's almost as if the company as a whole suffers from something like autism.

I think you're conflating "is a good idea" with "has people react as if it's a good idea". You're absolutely right that people respond irrationally, but it doesn't take "something like autism" to believe that surge pricing is good for users.

I do agree that they don't seem to deal with this irrationality well. The way they handle PR quite evidently needs work.

I don't mean the surge pricing itself, but how they do it and keep presenting it like everybody should be overjoyed about it is really weird. Stuff like advertising surge pricing during a hostage crisis is what I meant to refer to by "something like autism". So I think you're right, it's not so much about "is a good idea" as thinking everyone else must necessarily agree, at least once they have the facts in hand.

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