What's the simplest thing humans are too dumb to grasp?

You ever see a dog that’s got its leash tangled the long way round a table leg, and it just cannot grasp what the problem is or how to fix it? It can see all the components laid out in front of it, but it’s never going to make the connection.

Obviously some dog breeds are smarter than others, ditto individual dogs - but you get the concept.

Is there an equivalent for humans? What ridiculously simple concept would have aliens facetentacling as they see us stumble around and utterly fail to reason about it?

angelsomething,

Statistics and large numbers.

MacNCheezus,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

I studied statistics and the Law of Large Numbers is honestly mind boggling. I mean, I understand that it’s true and I’ve studied the proof, but it’s still enormously counterintuitive. It’s not surprising that anyone who isn’t familiar with it (which is the vast majority of people) to have no understanding of this phenomenon at all.

tal, (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paradoxes

List of things that, at least to some people, don’t work they way they’d expect.

I think that the Monty Haul problem is a good example on there.

Deceptichum,
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

Intentionally blank page: Many documents contain pages on which the text "This page intentionally left blank" is printed, thereby making the page not blank

Thats not a paradox. The pages are blank in terms of the topic of the book, and the note is to inform you that it’s not a mistake.

tal,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

It’s not particularly confusing, but there are a whole class of paradoxes that rely on the same mechanism – the truth of a statement is being altered by the existence of the statement, because it is self-referential in some way.

I think that the Berry paradox is the first one of these that I ran into, and it’s a little more confusing to most, I think.

Deceptichum,
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

See I’m really dumb, but how is that a paradox?

It just sounds like some guy said a false claim, which was proven to be false by its own wording, and thus because it’s false it’s a paradox?

I_Has_A_Hat,

Probability is a big one for me that I can’t wrap my head around because the rules just don’t seem to line up with reality. Like, if I roll a die 10 times and get 6 all 10 times, what is the probability of me rolling 6 again the next roll? It’s 1 in 6. But that’s insane. I just rolled 6 10 times in a row. That’s so wildly unlikely, it feels wrong that the odds I’d roll 6 again are only 1 in 6.

bluGill,

You have good reason to suspect those dice are not fair.

Semi-Hemi-Demigod,
@Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social avatar

The zipper merge.

bluGill,

Unintended consequences. People like to propose grand schemes that will "fix everything", but refuse to accept that there are downsides to that grand scheme.

MacNCheezus,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

Oh boy, that’s going to offend all the communists.

anti,

In the same vein, refusing to consider something that will have a small positive effect, or a partial solution, because it won’t fix everything.

lvxferre, (edited )
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

Infinity. We’re simply too dumb to grasp it. Example:


<span style="color:#323232;">3*(1/3) = 3/3 = 1
</span><span style="color:#323232;">3*(1/3) = 3*(0.333...) = 0.999...
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0.999... = 1
</span>

That “…” means “it continues to the infinite”. And yet when you show this reasoning to people, they keep “looking” for the last 9, to claim that 0.999… is not the exact same as 1.

And that applies to all humans. You might counter it rationally, you might train yourself to recognise “it’s infinite, so theoretically it’ll behave in a certain way”, but you don’t grasp it. I don’t, either.

Deceptichum,
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

Why would it be the same as 1, wouldn’t it always be 0.9 unless you round up at some point.

Darkaga,

There's lots of proofs for this but this is the simplest one.

.333... = 1/3
.333... • 3 = .999...
1/3 • 3 = 1
Therefore .999... = 1

Deceptichum, (edited )
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

Why is .333 being treated the same as a third?

You could have .3 of 2.7 and that wouldn’t be a third. So I don’t see why .3 times 3 would be anything other than 0.9?

LostXOR,

0.333... represents 0.3 repeating, which has an infinite number of 3s and is exactly equal to 1/3.

HeartyBeast,
@HeartyBeast@kbin.social avatar

I don't agree that they are the same.

It's just that the difference is infinitely small

magic_lobster_party,

The difference is zero, so they’re equal.

HeartyBeast,
@HeartyBeast@kbin.social avatar

Well, you state that as a fact, but I’m going to say that the difference is infinitely small, so they are equal

Hillock,

In this case you literally divide 1 by 3. And that's 0.3333 . And if you multiply 1/3 by 3 you get 1 and if you multiply 0.3333 by 3 you get 0.9999. So these two are the same.

Darkaga,

.333... Not .333

The "..." Here represents an infinitely repeating number.

In this context 1/3 = .333...

Deceptichum, (edited )
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

Just pretend I added dots. But that still doesn’t change anything?

Imagine a pizza, I can divide that pizza into halves, thirds, quarters, etc. because conceptually they represent splitting a defined thing into chunks that are the sum of its whole. 1/3 can exist in this world of finites.

0.333… is unending. I can’t have 0.333… of a pizza, because 0.333… is a number and that makes as much sense as saying I’ll have 2.8 pizza. Do I mean 2.8 times a pizza, 2.8% of one? Etc.

Darkaga,

1/3 being equal to .333... Is incredibly basic fractional math.

Think about it this way. What is the value of 1 split into thirds expressed as a decimal?

It can't be .3 because 3 of those is only equal to .9
It also can't be .34 because three of those would be equal to 1.2

This is actually an artifact of using a base 10 number system. For instance if we instead tried representing the fraction 1/3 using base 12 we actually get 1/3=4 (subscript 12 which I can't do on my phone)

Now there are proofs you can find relating to 1/3 being equal to .333... But generally the more simplistic the problem, the more complex the proof is. You might have trouble understand them if you haven't done some advanced work in number theory.

Deceptichum, (edited )
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

I get its basic shit that’s over my head. I’m just trying to understands

If the only reason is because 1/3 of 1 = 0.9, than id say the problem is with the question not the answer? Seems like 1 cannot be divided without some magical remainder amount existing

If I have 100 dogs, and I split them into thirds I’ve got 3 lots of 33 dogs and 1 dog left over. So the issue is with my original idea of splitting the dogs into thirds, because clearly I haven’t got 100% in 3 lots because 1 of them is by itself.

Likewise would 0.888… be .9? If we assume that magical remainder number ticks you up the next number wouldn’t that also hold true here as well?

And if 0.8 is the same as 0.888888888…, than why wouldn’t we say 0.7 equals 0.9, etc?

lvxferre, (edited )
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

I get its basic shit that’s over my head.

It’s over the head of everyone. That’s why I shared it here.

Likewise would 0.888… be .9?

No, but 0.899… = 0.9. This only applies to the repeating sequences of the last digit of your base. We’re using base 10 so it got to be 9.

If I have 100 dogs, and I split them into thirds I’ve got 3 lots of 33 dogs and 1 dog left over. So the issue is with my original idea of splitting the dogs into thirds, because clearly I haven’t got 100% in 3 lots because 1 of them is by itself.

Then you split the leftover dog into 10 parts. Why 10? Because you use base 10. Three of those parts go to each lot of dogs… and you still have 1/10 dog left.

Then you do it again. And you have 1/100 dog left. And again, and again, infinitely.

If you take that “infinitely” into account, then you can say that each lot of dogs has exactly one third of the original amount.

ivanafterall,
@ivanafterall@kbin.social avatar

Is there a number system that's not base 10 that would be a "more perfect" representation or that would be better able/more inherently able to capture infinities? Is my question complete nonsense?

bluGill,

Different bases would have different things they cannot represent as a decimal, but no matter what base you can find something that isn't there.

For real world use base 12 is much nicer than base 10. However it isn't perfect. Circles are 360 degrees because base 360 is even nicer yet, but probably too hard to teach multiplication tables.

exscape, (edited )
@exscape@kbin.social avatar

No, because that "some point" will never happen. There is no last nine to round up, because if there were a last nine, they wouldn't be infinitely many.

There are many different proofs of this online, more or less rigorous.

ArumiOrnaught,

.333... Is a third. That's just a quirk of base 10. If you go to a different number system you won't run into that particular issue.

The most common other base people know of is binary. Base 2. So in binary the fraction would be 1/11 and then 1/11(binary)=1/3(base 10).

I remember talk back in the day that base 12 is good for most common human problems. Some people were interested in trying to get people to switch to that.
1/3 of 12 is 4.
So 4/12=1/3=3.33333.../10

.333... Is just the cursive way of writing 1/3.

I still don't "grasp" infinity. I'd recon you'd need an infinite mind to grasp infinity.

Deceptichum, (edited )
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

1/3 of 10 is 3
3 x 3 is 9

Yet

1/3 of 1 is .3
.3 x 3 is 1?

Just does not compute for me.

ArumiOrnaught,

1/3 of 10 is 3.333...

1/3 of 1 is .333...

It's like when people come to America and are surprised when tax isn't included in sale prices. The .0333... you forgot to add on will get you in trouble with the universes math IRS.

magic_lobster_party,

One way to tell if two numbers are equal is to show there’s no real number between them. Try to formulate a number that’s between 0.999… and 1. You can’t do that.

Deceptichum, (edited )
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

But between 0.999 and 1 is 0.9999.

If something comes ever increasingly close to, but never physically touches something else, would you say it’s touching it?

magic_lobster_party,

0.999… means infinitely repeating 9s. There’s no more 9 to add that hasn’t already been added. If you can add another 9, then it’s not infinitely repeating.

Deceptichum,
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

So it never ends, and it stays 0.9… infinitely?

Still not a 1.

agent_flounder,
@agent_flounder@lemmy.world avatar

It’s an infinite number of nines after the decimal.

Or think of it another way. What number would you subtract from 1 to get 0.999… ? The answer is 0.

FishFace,

let x = 0.999…

so 10x = 9.999…

subtract first line from second:

9x = 9

divide by 9

x = 1

MrRazamataz,
@MrRazamataz@lemmy.razbot.xyz avatar

an asymptote 😎

lvxferre, (edited )
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

Because it isn’t 0.9; it’s 0.999… with the ellipsis saying “repeat this to the infinite” being part of the number. And you don’t need to round it up to get 0.999… = 1, since the 9 keeps going on and on, so their difference is infinitesimally small = zero.

Another thing showing that they’re the same number is that there is no number between them. For example:

  • 0.9 (no ellipsis) and 1 are different because 0.95 is between them
  • 0.95 and 1 are different because 0.97 is between them
  • there’s no number between 0.999… (with ellipsis) and 1, so they are the same. inb4 no “last nine” because it’s infinite.
bluGill,

In the real world when you see .9 you often should round it. You rarely have as much precision as presenting - .5 should generally be seen as 1 unless you have reason to believe the measurement is that precise.

MxM111, (edited )
@MxM111@kbin.social avatar

0.999… means the value of the limit of a sequence {0.9, 0.99, 0.999, …} as number of 9s (or length of a sequence) goes to infinity, and the limit is very clearly 1 in my mind.

owenfromcanada,
@owenfromcanada@lemmy.world avatar

My “easier” way to think of this one:

1 - 0.999… = 0

That is, if you subtract 0.999… from 1, what is the result? It’s an infinitely small value, which can only logically be expressed by 0.

Mr_Blott,

Is it not 0 . …1 ?

owenfromcanada,
@owenfromcanada@lemmy.world avatar

That’s exactly what it is–but when the “…” is infinitely long, you never get to the “1”. There is no “1” at all.

jaidyn999,

Actually infinity is easy to understand.

If you were to walk in a straight line, you would never get to the end of the earth - it is infinite.

Its finitism that is impossible to understand.

3*(1/3) = 3/3 = 1 3*(1/3) = 3*(0.333…) = 0.999… 0.999… = 1

This a problem of the number base you’re using, not infinity. One third is a finite number which cannot be expressed in base 10.

Nemo,

That why someone behaves a certain way is only important inasmuch as it determines whether they’ll keep behaving that way.

Examples:

  • Criminals don’t need to be punished but rehabilitated; because blame and guilt aren’t important; recidivism is.
  • Your lover might have all sorts of reasons they love you, and some of those may seem very romantic and some might seem as unromantic as can be. But as long as they will keep living you, that’s what’s important.
logicbomb,

Everybody else is saying things that some humans are too dumb to grasp. I’ll give you an example that virtually all humans are too dumb to grasp.

How are our decisions affected by conflicts of interests? The last time I looked into this, the research in this area said that humans virtually always underestimate the effect that a conflict of interests has on them, by a lot. Many people don’t even see the conflict of interests. People who recognize the conflict of interests believe that because they are aware of the conflict of interests, they can mitigate the effects completely. They are wrong.

Humans get entangled by conflicts of interests just like dogs get entangled by their leashes. Just like dogs, many times, humans don’t realize that they’re caught. Just like dogs, even if you show a human the problem, they cannot understand. But even worse than dogs getting tangled by their leashes, humans believe they can understand what to do when they’re caught up, but it turns out that they’re wrong.

yote_zip,
@yote_zip@pawb.social avatar

The existence of poverty/hunger/homelessness in a post-scarcity world. if we wanted to eliminate those problems we could, but humans are blocked on how it can be done without hurting their own wealth.

rbesfe,

Despite it being parroted by the terminally online, we do not live in a post-scarcity world.

chaogomu,

We're not yet in a post scarcity world. We're tantalizing close, but not quite there yet.

There are three main areas we need to work on.

First is power generation. We need more, and it needs to be decupled from fossil fuels. Nuclear is the obvious answer for massive amounts of power output without using massive amounts of land, but fossil fuel lobbies have been hamstringing development since the 50s.

The important thing here isn't just replacing fossil fuels. That would just leave us were we are now. No we need to double or triple world power generation as a start.

The second area that needs work is connected to the first. Transportation. Not just electric cars, but container ships and trains and everything in-between.

This is where that added power generation comes in. We need to make it basically free to move things from point A to point B. There are some ways to do this, particularly for container ships. But we need the raw power available before they become viable.

The final area is automation. We need more. Once people need to be put out of work in massive numbers. We need to decuple work from life.

That final step is the hardest with the most pitfalls. It will happen. Well, the automation and unemployment will happen. After that we can either spiral into a hell scape or rise above into a post scarcity utopia...

It really depends on when and how the guillotines come out

yote_zip,
@yote_zip@pawb.social avatar

You’re right, and I suppose I was half-thinking along the lines of “we have all the pieces to solve this, but we don’t because we’re frozen in place by greed” instead of “this is something we could do with infrastructure today”. If everyone could collectively let go and re-distribute wealth and materials efficiently everyone would be much better off for it, but instead we’re stuck in some game theory hell where the optimal personal choice results in one of the worst outcomes.

Jakdracula,
@Jakdracula@lemmy.world avatar

Under capitalism, food isn’t produced to eat but to make profits. When it’s not profitable to sell, they will rather dump foods, starving the people rather than to plainly donate. We produce enough foods to feed the entire population. But the sole purpose of food is to not feed the people, but to feed the greed of the producers, the farmers, the corporates. Capitalism created an artificial scarcity of food where we produce too much food for the obese and throw the rest away to rot in front of the poor.

Taleya,

🍇 😡

Mr_Blott,

You gonna eat those

weeeeum,

I study a lot of geopolitics and history and I have read of many different aid programs, domestically for citizens or abroad to poverty and war stricken countries.

Unfortunately it’s not as easy as dumping a bunch of money, food or whatever resource into the problem. For example there are cities with tons of homeless shelters but many stay on the streets. There are massive teams of social workers dedicated to helping people in need but many of them refuse their help.

When it comes to countries sometimes this aid is embezzled and only given to those loyal to the government. Sometimes used to fuel armies to continue conflicts, or just disappear into corruption and resold by crooked politicians to make a profit. Additionally it can hurt local, and in turn, the wider economy. The aid distributed for free kills many local businesses and livelihoods because you can compete with free.

Especially when you have some stupid company pulling a publicity stunt to send their own products as aid to struggling countries. One example was this brand of shoes that would donate a pair for every pair sold. This “friendly gesture” killed off all local cobblers, shoe manufacturers, shoe stores and prevented anyone from doing so to make a living, not to mention preventing self sufficiency of the country. That’s just one example, there are a lot of companies and misguided companies that do exactly this and many economists recommend that these poor countries should refuse this aid.

dmention7,

Impulse control and the general idea of delaying minor pleasures now that will have significant benefits later, or even just not doing things that kinda feel good in the moment but will make you miserable in the near future. As a species we’re pretty terrible at those kinds of judgments.

The meme of the guy poking a stick into his bike wheel in one frame and lying in a crumpled pile in the next is timeless for exactly that reason. Same with shocked Pikachu.

Gigan,
@Gigan@lemmy.world avatar

This was my thought too, delayed gratification. Lot’s of people make short term decisions that have negative long-term effects on their mental, physical, or financial health. And humanity does it as well, such as pollution or using fossil fuels when we know it’s going to cause problems in the future.

Ep1cFac3pa1m,
@Ep1cFac3pa1m@lemmy.world avatar

I was going to say long-term thinking. We’re just not wired to consider long-term consequences for the things we do. We continually get duped by promises of lower taxes without considering the damage it will cause for decades to come.

Bye,

Many people, including myself, are too dumb to understand that other people don’t value the same thing in us that we value in others.

You see them try and become what they like, in order to try to appeal to others. “Well I wish I got more attention, so I’m going to give tons and tons of attention to others”. “I wish someone would make a grand romantic gesture to me, so I’m going to do that to someone else”. That kind of thing.

This is sometimes called “fundamental attribution error” although I think that concept covers a bit more ground.

usualsuspect191,

This is the most charitable interpretation of why guys send dick pics

Bye,

I think it’s exactly why they do it

Noodle07,

I’m a guy, I received unannounced boob pics, that EXACTLY what men sending dick pics want.

JokklMaster,

This is not the fundental attribution error. The fundamental attribution error is seeing an action from a person and assuming it is a fundamental attribute of them. Literally in the name. E.g. you seem someone being rude in public so you assume they are a rude person. Meanwhile if you are rude in public you chalk it up to being in a bad mood as a result of something that happened to you, not because you are a rude person.

lvxferre,
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

It’s really similar to the fundamental attribution error, though, as you can see if phrased this way: “I value $foo by a certain amount because I’m a human being, thus other human beings value $foo as much as I do”.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Exponentials

royal_starfish,

Add logarithms to that

And calculus

And (a+b)²=a²+2ab+b²

Boozilla,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

Thinking that tailgating the vehicle directly in front of them will make thousands of other vehicles in front of that vehicle magically go faster. And many other reckless car-brain stunts.

cheese_greater, (edited )

Is this the root pathology behind traffic? Like, I never understood traffic, is there someone at the front refusing to go fast enough or is it the result of some distributed error like this that everyone mis-optimizes for that in aggregate results in traffic?

lvxferre,
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

Based on a game* I think that the root issue is that there are multiple bottlenecks, unavoidable for the drivers, like turning or entering/leaving lanes, forcing them to slow down to avoid crashing. Not a biggie if there are only a few cars, as they’ll be distant enough from each other to allow one to slow down a bit without the following needing to do the same; but once the road is close to the carrying capacity, that has a chain effect:

  • A slows down because it’ll turn
  • B is too close to A, so it slows down to avoid crashing with A
  • C is too close to B, so it slows down to avoid crashing with B
  • […]

There are solutions for that, such as building some structure to handle those bottlenecks, but they’re often spacious and space is precious in a city. Or alternatively you reduce the amount of cars by discouraging people from using them willy-nilly, with a good mass transport system and making cities not so shitty for pedestrians.

*The game in question is OpenTTD. This is easy to test with trains: create some big transport route with multiple trains per rail, then keep adding trains to that route, while watching the time that they take to go from the start to the end. The time will stay roughly constant up to a certain point (the carrying capacity), then each train makes all the others move slower.

royal_starfish,

Laughs in good public transit(rail based is based, but buses are good too), where it can achieve 10~100x the capacity in the same footprint

With rail, as long as you have a good timetable and a robust signaling system, 27tpdph with multiple service patterns is achievable, and >33tpdph if you run just one service pattern, all while having a top speed of 120km/h and an average speed of >50km/h

Railway in general (excluding Line-of-sight based light rail and trams) can move stupendous amounts of people at full speed really quickly due to signaling and mass transit inherently being more efficient in general

bluGill,

Most of the time and places a city doesn't need that capacity. Since your rail cannot get the garbage from my house, or my new bed to the house, we need roads as well. Thus for most a bus running in mixed traffic (remember most roads do not have heavy traffic!) is good enough and a lot cheaper. Where you need capacity a train is really good, but you don't need it.

That said I support trains in a lot more places because trains can run fully automated and thus in the real world can achieve the high frequency people need to choose transit even when a car isn't a problem to own (they can afford it and there is no traffic). This is however just a stop gap since self driving buses don't exist (yet?). In most "first world" countries cost of labor is high and automated trains are thus useful in places where a bus could do the job.

rdyoung,

You forgot one solution.

Teaching people how to drive safe and smart. Way too many people focus on the car in front of them instead of the traffic ahead. If you watch for brake lights as far up as you can see and let off the gas when appropriate, not only will you be less likely to be in or cause a wreck, you will also save wear and tear on your brakes and use less gas (even more pronounced with regenerative braking).

In addition to the above. When you are driving a route you know well, get the fuck over from which ever side is more likely to be used to turn off. For most highways this means moving left before you near an onramp. Plan ahead and get over before you need to do so you don’t have to speed up or slow down to let people in.

bluGill,

That won't help much. By the time anyone notices the roads are slowing down there are six times as many cars on it as it can safely handle. Driving skills will help on backroads, but that isn't where most people are driving. No amount of training can make heavy traffic safe.

rdyoung,

This is false and sets a bad example.

It will most definitely help. All it really will take is a certain percentage of people driving smart to make a difference.

As for safety. Heavy heavy traffic at a crawl is much safer than lighter traffic moving at or usually way above the speed limit. Yes, the chances of a rear-end collision are higher but no one is going to flip their car at 10mph. It’s the lighter traffic with idiots weaving in and out that makes it even more dangerous and more likely that someone dies when said idiot makes someone swerve out of the way or misjudges and hits something or someone they didn’t see coming.

I drive more miles in a couple of days than most people drive all month. I’ve probably racked up 500k+ miles in the past 25 years of driving. I’ve been almost run off the road more times than I can count and it wasn’t when traffic was at a crawl at the pinch points where traffic merges on to the highway.

lvxferre,
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

Driving safely and smart is essential for other reasons, it does prevent additional bottlenecks (you mentioned one, wreckages), and it reduces the impact of the unavoidable bottlenecks (because the cars won’t waste so much time re-accelerating after them). But if my reasoning is correct, most of the time there isn’t much that drivers can do against traffic besides “don’t use the car”.

bluGill,

Traffic is a numbers game. I've often observed that in free flowing traffic where I live (a tiny city with only about 700k people in the entire metro) that if you take two cars that are a safe following distance apart there will be 5 cars in between. If we put in 6 times as many lanes (already a 3-4 lane freeway each way, so we are talk 20 lanes for my tiny city!) traffic wouldn't go any faster, but they would space out to most maintaining a safe following distance. (if you put in 7 times as many lanes they would get farther apart yet, but still not go faster)

getseclectic,

There is research showing that adding lanes only helps for maybe six months. Then people realize that the route is better and change the routes they take, which leads to more congestion again. Fewer lanes can actually decrease congestion.

smv.org/…/how-does-roadway-expansion-cause-more-t…

bluGill,

That research is useless! Sure they measured it, so it isn't wrong. However it is useless. What it is really saying is your city was so bad that people were not taking advantage of living in the city because they couldn't conveniently get places. Those people could have lived in rural Montana for all the good a city did. Cities are about all the things you can do by living in it, so if people change because of new roads then you are a city were not meeting their ideals.

Also note that they measured one lane. I already asserted that by the time a city is thinking about adding one more lane they already need to add 6 times as many lanes (not 6 more lanes, 6 times!) IF your city needs 6 times more lanes than it has, no wonder people are choosing alternates, and once a lane exists they will start using it.

Again, the moral is build transit in cities.

NewNewAccount,

If I’m understanding correctly, your example wouldn’t apply to a highway that is experiencing heavy congestion.

bluGill,

It would, but worse. Both are a case of more cars than there is space. Heavy congestion would just need a lot more lanes to fix - maybe 10x as many. (don't ask me to pay for that or where those lanes go)

Or in short, support better transit for your city. For that cost of miles of 15 lane highways you can put in a lot of transit.

NewNewAccount,

Transit? PUBLIC transit? Wow that sounds a lot like socialism! Why do you hate freedom?!

/s

bluGill,

No, PRIVATE transit. I don't support the government building roads - that is meddling in the natural state of things and makes private industry unable to compete. If you must have socialist roads than you must have socialist transit as well, but I reject that.

Boozilla,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

It may be helpful to think of it as a stream or a river, and not a collection of individual drivers. We can only control ourselves, not the stream. People working so hard to put themselves and others at risk are maybe shaving a minute or so off of their commute. Just not worth the risk.

ShadowCatEXE,
@ShadowCatEXE@lemmy.world avatar

Or constantly inching forward at a red light as if you moving the extra 5 feet will make any significant difference in the time it takes for you to get where you’re going.

rdyoung,

That actually has purpose, sometimes. Some lights are triggered by a sensor in the road. If I feel like the light has been red longer than it should be I’ll inch up in case my car didn’t trigger the sensor. Same happens in reverse, cars will be stopped too far back to trigger it so everyone sits until either they move up or the programmed cycle kicks in.

The above said. You aren’t wrong. Plenty of people do that where there aren’t sensors, they also stick their nose way too far out, especially in the left turn lane.

ShadowCatEXE,
@ShadowCatEXE@lemmy.world avatar

Nah, this is in Toronto. Almost every light has so many cars waiting, it’s not a sensor thing. People are just so eager to get going.

spacecowboy,

We saw on mythbusters that tailgating is really good for fuel economy so we’re all just amateur scientists collecting data.

Rentlar, (edited )

At highway speeds, tailgating 10 ft behind a 53 ft tractor-trailer will net you about a 39% boost in fuel economy. And further your fuel usage will drop by 100% after the trailer flattens your hood from a sudden stop maneuver!

neumast,

Also, the closer you are to the trailer, the safer you are! Because the speed difference is much smaller, when you touch the trailer!

Sterile_Technique,
@Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world avatar

I just drop a mph every couple seconds until they fuck off. Don’t break check, as that’s super dangerous for you and everyone around you; don’t change lanes to accommodate them (unless you’re the source of the bottleneck and camping in the fast lane, in which case GTFO), since transitions are when accidents tend to happen; but you can absolutely slowly annoy a tailgater until they leave your bubble.

ramble81,

If you do this in the left lane and cars are passing you on the right, you in fact are the asshole.

bluGill,

Sure, but I'm the guy doing the speed limit in the right lane.

Sterile_Technique,
@Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world avatar

Very strong emphasis on the “unless you’re the source of the bottleneck and camping in the fast lane, in which case GTFO” part of my post!

bluGill,

I get tailgated all the time despite being in the right lane . Sometimes I can see that person hang up their phone, finally look and move over. (This was on a rural highway, I was doing 20 under the limit and over 15 minutes 3 other cars passed without issues, which accounts for a 5 cars going my direction in that time)

Boozilla,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

LOL, I also do the passive-aggressive slowdown thing. 99% of the time it works. But then there’s that rare psycho that refuses to get off your ass just to…uh…prove a point…by slowing themselves down? There was a post on schmeddit several years ago where a guy came to a complete stop in the middle of nowehere with the tailgator just sitting 1" from his bumper.

formergijoe,

My favorite are the red light racers who have to pass me while I’m going the speed limit and zoom to the next stop light… Just so they can wait at a red light longer than I do.

pHr34kY,

You get off the line to get across the intersection so that everyone queued behind you can get across before the light turns red again.

I’m amazed that so many people fail to realise that there is a solid time penalty for dawdling off the line.

formergijoe,

I’m not dawdling off the line though. I’m just not going 10 over the speed limit like this guy in the lifted truck wants.

bluGill,

Sadly it works out for them overall. It only takes a few times of getting to the next light as it turns yellow and they are way ahead while you are sitting there at a red light. Sure sometimes you get to see them when it doesn't work out, but when it works out they are long gone.

Timing traffic lights is a hard problem.

rdyoung, (edited )

This isn’t my experience. Traffic lights are extremely easy to time. Assuming you can see the other lights, watch them. There are a few lights in my city that have a right turn light while the other is red, when the turn light goes yellow that means the red will be green soon. I regularly blow past people sitting at the red while I coasted towards the red and gunned it as it turned green.

They also won’t be going anywhere when they get t-boned by someone else doing the exact same thing or straight running a red. It’s not worth the risk.

Oh and this isn’t a race. The goal is to get to your destination safe and sound without hurting yourself or anyone else. The sooner more people realize that, the safer all of us will be.

bluGill,

I was referring to the city engineers timing all the lights in a city. As a driver paying attention can help, but when you have several square miles of road network, with roads unequally spaced, different speed limits and all the other weird stuff they do in a real city it is not easy. It gets worse if you go from city to a metropolitan area.

I have concluded we will never convince people of that enough to change behavior (they will answer the question correctly when asked, but drive the same) thus i'm supporting transit as much as possible.

rdyoung, (edited )

Again not my experience. I grew up in Tampa and have lived/worked in other big cities like Charlotte. On the big main roads through town, the lights are usually timed so if you hit one green your golden (outside of extenuating circumstances) if you hit a red you’re screwed. They are also usually timed so if you hit a green and do the speed limit you should be fine and have all greens. It’s the idiots speeding or crawling that mess that up for themselves or others.

In addition to the above you have big cities like NYC, Vegas, etc that have a central traffic control and will change the timing to account for traffic. In my current city we don’t have that but a lot of the lights will go into red/yellow flashing mode where the main drag can cruise through but the cross street should be stopping but is free to go without waiting for the full cycle.

I’m not sure where you have lived or worked but in most places I’ve lived there have been only a couple of main thoroughfares and the rest all neighborhood roads that take twice as long even with traffic. Where I am now most of the time you are using the interstate to get across town east/west or for north/south you have like 3 options depending on where you are going. Some places you literally can’t get to without getting on the interstate or going some long ass way around.

Boozilla,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

A friend of mine calls that “racing to stop”.

Zarxrax,

Rejecting evidence that is right in front of our eyes because of some kind of religious faith or political beliefs.

idunnololz, (edited )
@idunnololz@lemmy.world avatar

Or rejecting research/statistics/math/science/etc. because of some anecdotal evidence.

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