[HN Gopher] 90% of Everything Is Crap
___________________________________________________________________
90% of Everything Is Crap
Author : mcrittenden
Score : 128 points
Date : 2021-01-20 21:00 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (critter.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (critter.blog)
| mywittyname wrote:
| >Think you hate poetry? Roller coasters? Banjo music? Thai food?
| Maybe you haven't discovered the good 10% yet. Keep looking.
|
| Maybe liking something means appreciating the average.
|
| I like steaks. I mean, I really like dry aged t-bones, but I also
| like a simply seasoned sirloin. I wouldn't even turn down an well
| done hockey puck if it came with a baked potato.
|
| I don't like movies. You would never find me indulging in the
| latest Sharknado nonsense. But I can enjoying myself while
| watching a critically-acclaimed film.
| khalilravanna wrote:
| Two thoughts:
|
| 1) I think the view that "90% of people are crap" is incredibly
| misanthropic, cynical, and a view that would likely make the
| world a worse place if widely adopted.
|
| 2) I think enjoying the 90% of crap is maybe more important than
| enjoying the 10% of not crap.
|
| Being able to enjoy bad movies, bad music, bad art, bad
| everything is _great_. Who wouldn't want to increase the amount
| of things they could enjoy by 2x or 3x or _9x_? I watched
| Battlefield Earth recently and it was a blast! One of my favorite
| shows is How I Met Your Mother (which is "crap" if you define
| "crap" as "less than the 90th percentile in that medium"...it's
| prolly a 70 or 80th percentile show).
|
| Why be an elite who turns their nose up at things when you can
| enjoy both the things the elites like AND the things they sneer
| at? Sign me up for the trash!
| xupybd wrote:
| >Then there's relationships. Think there's no one out there who
| can make you happy? Maybe you haven't climbed out of your 90% of
| crappy relationships yet. Keep looking
|
| There is no one that can make you happy. That's up to you. There
| are people that you can work well with and build a good
| relationship. That good relationship can help with the happiness
| but your attitude matters more.
| rabuse wrote:
| Doesn't this also relate to the Pareto principle?
| busterarm wrote:
| Yes.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Boy, this entry took a very fast nosedive to page 2. Does that
| mean that HN thinks it's in the 90%?
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| Usually that means there are too many comments in ratio to
| votes. I'm sure there are other triggers that can drop a
| story's rank too.
| goatcode wrote:
| Neat.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| 90% of Sturgeon's Law observations are crap.
| grenoire wrote:
| This seems like... a bunch of very loosely connected ideas in a
| blog post.
| CharlesW wrote:
| To be fair, 90% of blog post ideas are crap too.
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| I enjoy discovering new music a lot. I'm also extremely selective
| in picking the songs that go into my personal music library.
| Maybe 5% of the songs I listen to, _within the subgenres I
| already prefer_, make it.
|
| I don't disagree with the author, based on my narrow personal
| experience.
| avrionov wrote:
| Not a good piece. Total waste of time.
| polka_haunts_us wrote:
| Eh. I like the phrase but I disagree with the premise you apply
| to it. If I were defining a few things about myself I would say
| "I like Anime" and "I hate EDM". I keep ratings for every anime
| I've ever watched, the average score is about 7.48/10.
| Objectively, a lot of it was crap that I would never recommend to
| anyone, but it's crap I enjoy. On the other hand, there are EDM
| songs I like that are on my playlist on Spotify. Even though I'll
| happily listen to them, they don't make me think "Wow, I really
| need to test my view that I don't like EDM". I already know I
| don't like it. The fact there are exceptions doesn't make it not
| a useful rule for me to follow when choosing music.
|
| IMO the healthier attitude, rather than seeking out things you
| don't like, is to leave yourself open to things you don't like,
| particularly in a group setting. It's very annoying lately, my
| group of friends wants to play video games after work, but
| everybody has some kind of game type they don't like that makes
| it hard to reach consensus. Rather than being in constant pursuit
| of optimized personal pleasure, it's important that I sometimes
| just play the games I don't like so in the future they'll play
| the games they don't like with me. And then maybe by chance one
| of us actually will end up liking it despite ourselves.
|
| There's another layer here as well as to the scale of things. "I
| don't like EDM" is a very differently scaled statement than "I
| don't like Music". When confronting your own preferences, I think
| it's important to compartmentalize them appropriately. I identify
| myself as someone that likes anime, but I will never watch
| another shonen sports anime again willingly.
| lhorie wrote:
| I feel like you're actually agreeing with the article. From
| what you're saying, you've consumed enough anime and EDM to
| make an informed decision on whether you "like" them or not.
|
| I think this is very different, for example, from eating
| chinese food in the US and deciding that one doesn't like
| chinese cuisine (without being aware that most of the chinese
| food that americans experience is a very poor representation of
| what mainland chinese food looks like, never mind _good_
| chinese food)
|
| The point about being open about video games you don't like
| seems to reinforce that idea: maybe the game genre itself is
| not to your liking, but it turns out that the social aspect is
| worth it. This was the case for me and LAN FPS back in the day:
| had I dismissed the genre, I would not have experienced the fun
| of LAN parties.
| smogcutter wrote:
| This is a little off the point, but thinking about games I find
| that the "8 kinds of fun" is a really useful lens, especially
| for deciding whether someone else might like a particular game.
| Definitely more so than the spectrum of good/mediocre/bad that
| reviews generally sort games into.
|
| The idea is that broadly there are eight basic ways that people
| get enjoyment out of games: challenge, narrative, sensation,
| fantasy, discovery, fellowship, expression, and submission.
| They're basically self-explanatory except the last, which is
| "turn your brain off and unwind" games candy crush or a slot
| machine.
|
| Everyone has preferences in these categories to different
| degrees, and they go a long way to predicting what we'll enjoy.
| Into challenge and discovery? You've probably already beaten
| dark souls. Expression and discovery, and can do without
| narrative? Minecraft. If I was running a game review site, I'd
| break games down by which categories they hit, and how well.
|
| And for my fellow (former) EVE Online players, this explains
| why different portions of the player base find each other
| totally incomprehensible.
| blissofbeing wrote:
| I'm curious your favorite anime?
| dmcginty wrote:
| To expand on what you're saying, there's a big difference
| between "I don't like X" and "X is bad". I've never been much
| of a wine person. It's not without trying. I've had everything
| from cheap boxed Franzia to a several hundred dollar bordeaux
| (that was totally wasted on me). I took a wine class where I
| was given samples and explicitly told "this is what good wine
| tastes like". I don't dislike wine and I don't think wine is
| bad, but the 10% of wine that is good doesn't appeal to me that
| much.
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| The thing about wine is, if you don't physiologically have
| tons of fungiform papillae on your tongue (ie super taster)
| you'll never appreciate the nuances in wine. If you're a non-
| taster wine is pretty much wasted on you for sure and you
| should seek out enjoying food with regard to texture rather
| than flavor. So it very well may be that it's not even a
| matter of preference, but a matter of nature.
| SergeAx wrote:
| This is equivalent of "if you don't have enough muscle
| fibers of specific type in your legs - you'll never win the
| Olympics". While it is probably true, it doesn't mean you
| can't run just for fun with friends or play football with
| colleagues or do a ton of other physical activities.
|
| Taste can be trained, and to surprising extent. Any person
| without tasting apparatus injuries may learn to evaluate
| wine and distinguish good $10 bottle from bad $50 one in a
| blind tasting.
| fossuser wrote:
| The wine example is a tricky one because there's another
| metric aside from like/dislike or good/bad that wine falls
| into. Maybe class related status bullshit?
|
| I enjoy wine, but I also recognize a lot of the snobbiness
| about it (particularly at the high end) is a mixture of snake
| oil and rich people looking for a place to buy more status.
|
| I remember some interview on NPR with a wine expert. The host
| was asking why in all the double blind trials people aren't
| able to consistently rate wines or even have consistent
| preferences. The wine expert complained that it's the fault
| of doing it double blind and 'when they're present with the
| people' (and likely giving them obvious clues about what's
| supposed to be good or not) 'they can tell the difference'.
|
| There's good/bad, like/dislike, but there's also true and
| fraud, high status and low status. Sometimes it can be hard
| to tell the difference, sometimes there isn't a difference.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The middle-class version of this is craft beers. Oh god,
| the grief I was getting from my friends once almost
| everyone got infected by the "I only buy expensive craft
| beers, and I care for taste" showmanship. To each their
| own, but I really do think that a particular brand of
| cheap, mass-market beer that I like tastes better, and it's
| also cheap. I have other things that I like to pay premium
| for.
| smogcutter wrote:
| Yeah, I think where the trouble starts is when people take
| preferences as a declaration of some kind of Kantian
| universal imperative. So someone else's taste becomes a
| judgment on you as a person. This drives people _bananas_ on
| the internet, where you don't have to treat other people
| like, you know, people. In particular, I think this accounts
| for the frothing rage that video game reviews can generate.
|
| For my part, I'm just glad I grew out of giving a shit what
| kind of music other people like.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I'd challenge the notion that you don't like EDM, especially
| when there is some you like.
|
| When I was a kid, I was a pretty picky eater. Then one day I
| was in a sandwich shop, and someone ordered a type of ham
| sandwich that I'd never get, but clearly a lot of people do. It
| made me think, "wow there's a lot of people who do like it, so
| maybe there's something to it. And I should want to like it
| too, because if I did, then I would have more things to enjoy
| in life."
|
| That principal has taken me quite far. If your default view is
| that you want to like things, it's amazing how much your
| previous objections can crumble. Usually it's not just about
| exposure (to the "right 10%"), but also your mindset.
| mdoms wrote:
| > I'd challenge the notion that you don't like EDM,
| especially when there is some you like.
|
| Stop.
| robocat wrote:
| I think it is a fallacy that "if you only tried it more
| often, then you would like it" or the sibling fallacy "if you
| tried the absolute best, then you would like it".
|
| I have personally experimented with this, with various
| products I don't like. For example, I have repeatedly tested
| Manchego cheese, expecting to eventually grow to like it (I
| love a wide variety of cheeses), but somehow I still don't
| like it. The same with some forms of music that others may
| love which I have tried to appreciate, but I just never grow
| fond of the genre.
|
| That said, perhaps a counter-example: I have found that at my
| favourite restaurants (more than one cuisine), I can pick
| anything on the menu, and I will like it even though it may a
| dish or contain an ingredient I would usually dislike... but
| maybe that is because a seasoning/sauce matters more to me
| than the base ingredient? Or I've found a chef with similar
| taste profile to me?
|
| I am now old enough to give up more quickly on things others
| love but I don't. I have also learnt that some
| things/experiences are not worth trying even once, regardless
| that others recommend them.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Hmm, idk, I like anime too. But I would strongly expect to
| dislike a randomly chosen anime title (generously, filtering
| down to stuff at least loosely targeted at someone my age).
| It's relatively easy to find curated lists of stuff that is not
| crap. Games are harder. I feel like at this point I look at a
| game and can more or less visualize the entire game loop,
| estimate a low percentage of content that would actually
| interest me, and just yawn at the prospect of playing it. But
| art is pretty boring if it has nothing to novel to say.
|
| Novel art is a fantastic thing to enjoy. But if you're really
| looking for it, it's a more difficult thing to find by the day.
| lhorie wrote:
| > I would strongly expect to dislike a randomly chosen anime
| title
|
| I'd argue that the japanese anime space is extremely crowded
| and there's a lot of bad quality stuff and recycling. Upon
| seeing yet another shounen harem, I'd often joke that episode
| 7 would surely be a beach episode... and sure enough, it
| almost always was!
| retrac wrote:
| > but everybody has some kind of game type they don't like that
| makes it hard to reach consensus
|
| The paradox of choice. Or whatever the term is. The huge range
| of options available let us whittle ourselves down into a
| perfect little hole of preference, but I suspect that
| diminishing returns kick in real quick.
|
| The truth is that you'll probably have nearly as much fun if
| you just pick up one of six cartridges you've got (like we had
| to back in the old days) and have at it, than if you spent a
| week carefully selecting the optimal game from the tens of
| thousands out there. That is a deceptively attractive misuse of
| time, for some reason.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > The truth is that you'll probably have nearly as much fun
| if you just pick up one of six cartridges you've got (like we
| had to back in the old days) and have at it, than if you
| spent a week carefully selecting the optimal game from the
| tens of thousands out there.
|
| As someone who enjoys bad movies more than good movies, this
| is simply not true. Pick any 6 random games on Steam and see
| if you find 2+ of them moderately enjoyable.
|
| There really is just a lot of crap out there, and not
| everything is meant for everybody. Also over time gaming has
| become more mainstream which means more people interested
| solely in money, a larger audience for more niche genres, as
| well as half-assed hobby projects since Steam Greenlight
| (which is now Steam Direct) have cropped up over time.
|
| I get the gist of your argument and there's something to be
| said for just trying something new and enjoying it. But your
| argument is roughly equivalent to "buy a plane ticket
| anywhere in the world and enjoy your 1 week vacation!"
| Chances are most people would prefer Paris, France to Paris,
| Texas. Even if a few people would actually enjoy the
| different experience equally or more, most certainly
| wouldn't.
| antasvara wrote:
| I generally agree with that, with the caveat that the top
| 10% of anything is closer to indistinguishable. For
| example, there's a very clear difference between Paris,
| France and Paris, Texas. However, once we've narrowed the
| category down to "popular vacation destinations" or
| something like that I think the differences are narrowed.
| watwut wrote:
| I dont know. Sometimes you really dont like that kind of
| game/movie/etc. And you prefer no game over that game.
| nosmokewhereiam wrote:
| For those who don't like "EDM", there is still hope: Good
| quality techno by established musicians can be had every
| weekend at Techno-club.net. It's a pay-for site with a
| reasonable cost, similar to a ticket price you'd get at a club
| for a night.
|
| I almost gave up on trying to wade through some of the crap on
| the latest and greatest music subscription services. Sometimes
| you just gotta let the underground artists take care of things!
|
| The site owner and moderators are good people trying to do
| great things with some of the most talented DJ's. Check it out
| every Friday and Saturday. Note: All times are in London time,
| FYI.
| rightbyte wrote:
| These unfounded aphorisms are quite tiring. I went to the store
| today and bought tomatoes. 100% was red and fine.
| PeterisP wrote:
| In a random store most likely 100% of tomatoes are crap, as
| stores overwhelmingly pick the varieties of tomatoes which are
| optimized so that they can be transported and stored and
| transported without damage and spoilage (and since logistics
| takes time, they have to be picked before they're fully ripe),
| trading off flavor, taste and nutrients.
|
| There are many tomato varieties that objectively taste much
| better (you don't have to be a snob or supertaster, the
| difference is obvious), but they are hard or impossible to
| distribute through modern logistics, you would have to live
| very close to the grower (or grow them yourself) so that you
| can eat them the day they're picked without driving them around
| half the country. And, of course, you get them when they're in
| season, not year-round. That's impractical, so most of us
| rather choose to eat crap tomatoes most of time - and so 90% of
| tomatoes are crap. Even if they're red and we consider that
| crap as normal, they're still crap in comparison.
| WJW wrote:
| Presumably the 90% of tomatoes that were not red and fine were
| made into ketchup or something like that. Of course if you
| select for an attribute first then that attribute is going to
| be over-represented.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Of the remaining 10% that reached the shop, 90% were probably
| not perfect photo-like quality, and you can find them dumped
| in the trash can at the end of the day (if you can grab them
| before local freegans do, that is).
| rightbyte wrote:
| I giggled a bit, but the nice red tomatoe yield is quite high
| in my small garden experience.
| username90 wrote:
| When items have reliable quality we call them commodities and
| suddenly stop noticing their quality.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Sure. Recently I tried an Indian dish that quickly made Indian
| food go from being my 10th favorite option to my 1st. Turns out I
| just hadnt found the Indian food I loved until that night.
|
| Now it makes me wonder if there is an Italian dish I would love
| that much.
| novaRom wrote:
| What was it exactly? As for Italian one, did you try Sicilian
| Arancini?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I can highly recommend veal saltimbocca as being worth a try.
| hartator wrote:
| > Remember: strong opinions, loosely held
|
| I am actually thinking the reverse now: Loose opinions, strongly
| held. It's better to a vague - loose opinion like "do not harm"
| but held it strongly than something precise like "never kill
| someone" but held it loosely.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The first (strong opinions) seems to relate to _judgements_.
| The second to _values_ (how we arrive at judgements).
|
| There's a fair argument that values might need to be less
| rigorously arrived at but more tightly helf. Many values are
| beyond proof and more closely resemble axioms or premises. Even
| here _some_ inclination to revise assessments might be
| warranted. E.g., "kill, if necessary to save your or another's
| life from one killing unjustly". Moral absolutes are hard to
| find.
|
| Interesting thought though.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| I'd go as far as 98%, but the problem is it's getting worse!
| Everybody's optimizing everything, creating ever crappier crap.
| To quote Jay Pritchett, "Crap. Crappacino. Charlie Craplin."
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Combined with the further "Strong Opinions, Loosely Held" this is
| very real advice.
|
| Broad statements like this tend to be very inline with our
| intuitions for many things - even if we must admit that they have
| very little "real" evidence. It doesn't mean that such common
| aphorisms don't have value or utility in our lives...
| adamc wrote:
| 90% of hacker news is crap, too.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| At Internet scale, crap is well above six sigma.
|
| Facebook sees about 5 billion items posted daily. The typical
| person likely sees between 10--100 items, and closer the lower
| end than you might think.
|
| At a ratio of 10 : 5 billion, the non-bullshit fraction is
| about 0.00000002%. Or 99.99999998% of everything is bullshit in
| terms of relevance.
|
| (This also means that any rating or selection system itself is
| operating very nearly randomly.)
|
| If 10 items seems to few, remember that the average person uses
| social media for about an hour pervday --- interaction per item
| is 60 minutes/n, where _n_ is the number of items viewed or
| interacted.
|
| Even skilled content moderators have an upper bound in practice
| of about 700--800 items/day, sustained.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I guestimate that the ratio to my eye is a bit better for HN on
| technology, but I'd also argue that anything outside business,
| science, and engineering the ratio is often worse - Political
| threads seem to really show off a lot of overstretching, both
| in issues of political economy and in often pretty blatantly
| tribal lack of due diligence that wouldn't fly if the thread
| were about (say) something just as easily google-able but
| technology (HN I love you, but you're bringing me down, and all
| that).
| kuroguro wrote:
| And 90% of the comments too! :)
| scsilver wrote:
| Yup, crap is inextricable from greatness. A diamond only forms
| in the rough, it doesnt form inside other diamonds, it doesnt
| have the right conditions.
| ecf wrote:
| Why yes, everything would include Hacker News as well.
| fny wrote:
| Actually, 99% of HN is crap. 90% of the front page is crap.
| nix23 wrote:
| Wow that's actually true, but our comment are too ;)
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| but does that 90% cluster on a particular user set, or is
| it 90% of each user's submissions are crap?
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| I was going to say the same thing, there is insane amount
| of pre-filtering before we even see anything. So real
| proportion of crap things is somewhere above 99%.
| YarickR2 wrote:
| 90% of people are crap too ? That's mean
| goatcode wrote:
| >90% of every _thing_ is crap
|
| Perhaps to someone who considers them things.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| 60% of people are water, 75% of feces are water.
| goatcode wrote:
| 100% of cancer has water in it.
| u678u wrote:
| The nazis drank water.
| erik_landerholm wrote:
| I didn't know this was a "law", but i've been triangulating on
| this same feeling for a long time now. I would say it's 1%-10% of
| anything is actually good. You can basically apply this to almost
| any category, but for most things it doesn't really matter. I
| would guess while no two people would agree if asked to pick
| their top 5% of any one thing, if you tallied up all the votes
| and had enough participation, you could probably put together a
| list that would generally include the best of whatever that
| category is.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The story behind it is interesting; critics complained about
| the low-quality of typical sci-fi. Sturgeon observed that 90%
| of novels in any genre (or pieces of art in general) are
| garbage, so the observation that "90% of sci-fi is crap" does
| not speak to the quality of sci-fi as a genre.
| bgun wrote:
| > Maybe you haven't discovered the good 10% yet. Keep looking.
|
| Keep in mind that 90% of your own opinions are crap, too - so you
| aren't likely to know the good from the bad even once you're
| exposed to it.
|
| To put it another way, you can't really know whether you like
| something or not until you've a) gotten over the fear of it, and
| b) learned how to do or recognize it competently.
| insickness wrote:
| I think it would be more accurate to say, 90% of everything will
| be crap _to you_. I listen to a lot of music and it is true that
| 90% of what I hear I consider crap. However, tastes very widely.
| I could find an amazing song and show it to all my friends--who
| like the same genre of music--and only a fraction of them will
| love the song also.
| [deleted]
| bravura wrote:
| I'm a firm believer in this, having lived through "NYC _used_ to
| be so cool " or "Burning Man _used_ to be so cool. " If you focus
| on the essential 10%, you learn what that thing really is about.
|
| NOW. Here's where it gets personal and interesting.
|
| I went with a friend to a shitty diner and ordered eggs benedict.
| I love eggs benedict. And he was like: "Why did you do that?" "I
| love eggs benedict!" "I love eggs benedict too, but I don't like
| lame eggs benedict."
|
| That struck me as so inconceivable.
|
| Then I remembered a friend who would constantly order shitty
| burgers by delivery. And I gave them such grief: "burgers are
| only meant to be enjoyed when they are amazing, why order a
| mediocre burger??"
|
| In retrospect, I realized that there are certain things that you
| will like even if they aren't great, once you appreciate them.
| And certain things you will only like if they are done the
| excellence. I like any egg benedict, even if it's lame. I am a
| snob when it comes to burgers. Switch this for your world-view.
|
| The important point is that you must learn to _appreciate_
| something, before you sort it into "I enjoy it" vs. "not good
| enough". You can't simply dismiss an entire genre based upon some
| theoretical a priori motive. But after you have tasted it, and I
| mean truly tasted it, you can decide whether you can be an
| elitist about it.
| noncoml wrote:
| > 90% of Everything Is Crap
|
| I guess this applies to this blog entry as well.
|
| And my reply here I guess.
| danschumann wrote:
| Then work on plumbing systems 90% of the time!
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Perhaps that's why every programming job I ever did involved
| 10% of interesting problems, and 90% of plumbing to connect the
| interesting bits?
| thedracle wrote:
| I can decidedly say that more than 90% of literal crap is crap.
| comfrey wrote:
| There is a corollary to Sturgeon's law which states:
|
| This remains true for the remaining 10%
| username90 wrote:
| Which would mean that it is actually "The bottom 90% is
| significantly worse than the top 10%".
| Lio wrote:
| > If you think you hate something, hold that opinion loosely by
| putting it to the test. Try to prove it false.
|
| Not just that but put it to the test again at some later date.
| Tastes can change over time and it's fine to update your
| opinions.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Plus one on accurately quoting/applying strong opinions, loosely
| held. Anecdotally, most of the time I see this applied people
| just want someone to be easy to convince. Easy to convince should
| be a function of the data/reasoning that lead to the currently
| held choice. Until an exceeding choice is found, why relinquish
| the currently held one for one with _less_ data/rationale?
| themodelplumber wrote:
| > Keep your identity small. "I'm not the kind of person who does
| things like that" is not an explanation, it's a trap. It prevents
| nerds from working out and men from dancing.
|
| Good one! Subjective identity is merely one's perspective on
| one's own past experience...why turn the future into the ultimate
| risk.
| dang wrote:
| Related from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11395845
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-01-20 23:02 UTC)