Slashdot Mirror
The Placebo Effect Not Just On Drugs
dvdme writes "It seems the placebo effect isn't just valid on drugs. It's also a fact on elevators, offices and traffic lights. An article by Greg Ross says: 'In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the 'close door' button has no effect. Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact to the Wall Street Journal in 2003. Similarly, many office thermostats are dummies, designed to give workers the illusion of control. "You just get tired of dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat," said Illinois HVAC specialist Richard Dawson. "Guess what? They quit calling you." In 2004 the New York Times reported that more than 2,500 of the 3,250 "walk" buttons in New York intersections do nothing. "The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on."'"
I keep voting and nothing new happens.
Is it really intentional?
I thought the walk-buttons was just there because no-one bothered to remove them, and later because they shared house with the beeper that helped blind people. So a lot of crossing had walk-buttons simply because they had beepers, even if the walk button wasn't connected.
My computer isn't responding when I click an icon. I click again. Nothing. So I click it really hard 30 times in a row. Now the computer decides to respond. Clearly, the computer can read my frustration, and therefore hurries to open the 32 firefox windows I requested.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Now you'll tell me that posting on Slashdot has no effect...
Is this why my comments rarely appear on forums? Seriously, I leave a comment and many times it never appears, is it simply a placebo, or worse a place to harvest email addresses?
mfwright@batnet.com
This just shows how little respect people have for each-other.
The button that you press after you get, "slowdown cowboy" that asks you to wait 1 minute before posting again, does nothing. No matter how many minutes elapse, that button never gets reactivated. Slashdotters have typically installed greasemonkey, flashblock, adblock, noscript and thousand other add ons, they just blame their javascript interceptor is misbehaving and continue on.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Well yes and no. It is true that most of them have no effect in normal operation, but when the elevator is in service mode (i.e. apartment move mode), then doors stay open until you press the close button.
In my sister's apartment, the close button has a effect. The normal door open time is about 40 seconds, and it will close the instant you press the close button (i.e. after 5 seconds). In the office building that I'm in (mid 60s construction), the close button has no effect unless the elevator is in service mode).
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
Why would the effect only be limited to pharmaceuticals?
Technoli
ok, so I arrive in a town at an intersection with a button.
I am going to press it because how the heck do I know whether its connected or not?
liqbase
Seriously! The summary quotes the ENTIRE "article". Come on, Slashdot.
I read an article in the Washington Post ~20 years ago about people waiting in lines. A hotel was constantly receiving complaints about the speed of their elevators. They kept tweaking the elevators, but the complaints continued to roll in (despite the quantifiable improvements). Rather than continuing to pursue the problem with technology, they turned to psychology and installed mirrors in the elevator lobby. Seems that if people have something interesting to look at (to them at least), the time passes more quickly and they do not notice that the elevators are slow. After they made this final change, the complaints stopped. I think about this every time I see a mirror in an elevator lobby.
In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they're not.
If even one of them works, doesn't that mean I have to push them just to be sure?
An IT variant: "You were the last one to touch my computer, so it must be your fault".
Have you ever pressed a "Close Doors" button before? It's pretty obvious that they don't actually do anything. I'd just figured they only worked when the fire service key was used.
I was recently in an office building where the elevators had no buttons at all. In front of the elevator was a keypad where you typed which floor you needed to go to, the system assigned you an elevator and you could only get on and be delivered to your earlier chosen floor.
http://virtualize.wordpress.com/
"Placebo effect" implies a perceived improvement. I think it's obvious by the number of times people push elevator close door or street "walk" buttons, or fiddle with office thermostats, there is no perceived improvement.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
"Placebo" refers to situation where a patient does not know that the medication is inactive.
I am not sure about everyone, but I happen to know that most "close" buttons on elevators and most street crossing buttons to activate a pedestrian traffic lights do not work (the former by design, they are there for fire control mode, the latter mainly because they are broken :) ).
However, I still continue to use them and the reason is very simple:
1. They still work occasionally (as was the case just last week in a hotel elevator, where doors would close immediately by using close button, and stay open for extended periods of time without it, tested many times). It's a "nice surprise" when it works - and nothing is lost when it does not work.
2. They may be required occasionally. I know of a quite a few intersections where pedestrian traffic light won't turn green without the use of a button. It's not worth wasting a few traffic light cycles to find out whether the button is or is not needed. It's easier to just press it - if it works, great, if not - again nothing lost.
So, to conclude, this situation is nothing like placebo.
Well, perhaps except for thermostats, but I haven't worked in the office in years - and when I did, never bothered with these things.
Our votes have been unhooked for some years now, yet we keep going to the booths.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Back in the late 90's I worked for a company doing general IT repairs, upgrades and whatnots.. One of our engineers came in complaining about his 4x CD-ROM being slow, and that since he was an engineer he needs a faster one. One of the guys I worked with took another 4X CD-ROM and carefully put a 3 on it with a sharpie.. So it looked as if to be a "34X" drive.. He installed it, the engineer was happy, and we never heard a word about it.
They are a good aid in me repeatedly hitting it both before and after someone boards the elevator, and a visual aid to my sighing in exasperation when they make it on the elevator. They convey exactly the message I intended.
"most elevators installed since the early 1990's, the close door button has no effect"
and yet i frequently use the close door button to real effect in nearly every elevator i have been in in the last fifteen years including ones installed since 2000.
meanwhile, some news claims aren't factual but people believe they are because they are made by news agencies.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Maybe they could harness all that useless button pushing to generate electricity?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Ah, one of the first positive things that I noticed when I moved overseas was that the "door close" buttons on elevators actually worked. You push them, the door closes. It's that sort of literal-mindedness when a culture apes another culture without knowing why it's doing so. The "how" but not the "why". They didn't know that door close buttons were placebos put in place to lie about giving control. Instead, they connected them up to the control circuits, and when you press the button, by God, the elevator doors close. You can even close the doors directly after they open, ignoring the pleas of people running to get in. Heh, that was another education as well, seeing as I had previously thought that holding elevator doors open for random strangers was something that 'everybody did' - turns out, it's just our culture that does it.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Hmmm, placebo effect? How about when she says she likes it, and moans appropriately, but really you're not doing a thing for her?
The elevator close button not doing anything is certainly true most places in the U.S. It isn't worth pushing the button. Go somewhere like Hong Kong, though, and when you hit the door close button the doors close right now. If someone is halfway through the door when you hit it, too bad - they get chopped in half. I love it.
Walk buttons are different. I can see not having them hooked up at busy intersections, especially at intersections where there are always (or nearly always) pedestrians waiting to cross. Where I live, the buttons absolutely work - the walk signal doesn't illuminate and the signal timings are different if you don't push the button. It is all about maximizing the flow of vehicular traffic while protecting pedestrians. Interesting that they leave the buttons there even when they don't do anything, but I seriously doubt there are many (if any) places where walk buttons were installed purely for the placebo effect.
Also - you call that an article? Worst. Submission. Ever.
Here is a rule of thumb for article submitters: if you can repeat the entire 'article' in the summary, you chose a bad article. Try at least digging up some of the original sources to link to (like the Wall Street Journal article mentioned).
the close door buttons DO work in our building (FWIW we have Otis) but there's a trick which I've experimentally confirmed: something has to trip the sensor between the inner & outer doors to make it think someone has gotten on or off. I can consistently (100x out of 100 tries) replicate the following behavior: if elevator stops on floor w/nobody waiting I simply waive my hand in the gap, press the close button & the doors immediately close/elevator continues - press the button w/o something having tripped the sensor & it just sits there till its normal timeout period.
individual results may vary but I've successfully been doing this for 10+ yrs at my current employer...
I'm primarily a pedestrian, so I've had time to test out the walk button. Most of the time, the walk button only makes the walk sign change, otherwise it just says at the stop hand icon.
The times it does change things is usually near parks or by little used streets where if it was disconnected you'd be waiting a very long time.
> In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the 'close door' button has no effect.
Do these things surprise *anybody*? I've ridden in many elevators and it was clear after a number of tries that these buttons do nothing. I never knew *why*, but I remember consciously thinking that there was no difference between my pushing and not pushing it, so I stopped trying. Similar for local walk buttons.
It really makes me depressed that so many people are so disconnected from the reality they live in that they are fooled by these things. I think this kind of "mindless" state of being is correlated with making really bad decisions in other ways which make society worse for everyone.
I agree. This seems more like behaviorism - if I push this button, I may get a reward.
As for the thermostats, they are kidding themselves if they think people actually believe they work. People stop calling because at that point the realize it is pointless to continue complaining, because nothing is going to be done about the situation.
How many times have we seen people think they're playing an arcade game when they're just jiggling the controllers pointlessly during the demonstration mode?
I know a few people who rock their cars back and forth at stoplights in order to "trigger the pressure plates." No matter how many times I try to explain to them the lights are on a timer they remain convinced that they are tricking the system into giving them an advantage.
the vote in 2000 was so close, that it was well within the margin of the number of people who think helplessly like you and therefore don't vote, when they actually could have made a difference and gave us al gore instead of gw bush... if they actually voted
you tell me with a straight face that al gore would have invaded iraq, or given us an asshole chief justice who was the deciding vote earlier this year that corporations get to spend unimpeded in elections. in other words, yeah, your vote matters less than it should: because assholes who think like you made sure that is the way things are. self-fulfilling prophecy
they don't mess around with a silly vote in other countries. they just treat like a slave straight up. you prefer that? your vote is so precious in this world, and you are so ignorant as to its real value. your vote is cheapened by your ignorance
corporations, evil scehming senator palpatine types, dumb rednecks... all pretty much constants in life in any time period and any society. but people who are ignorant like you about the value of their vote: you are the real enemy, and the real source of the problems in our world. if we are slaves, and not free men, it is because of you, more than anything else
you aren't part of the problem. you ARE the problem. you cheapen our democracy with your self-fulfilling prophecy of the worthlessness of a vote, by not voting. you don't deserve to vote. and with enough assholes like you in society, none of us will have a vote that matters. congratulations, asshole, you made the world in your image
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What happened on Slashdot? It used to be that you'd actually write a summary with several relevant links to different sources. Then it became just quoting the first paragraph of the article. Now its just posting the entire article? At least I guess we can't claim someone didn't RTFA.
How many of you just headed to the elevator (fiddling with the thermostat on the way) and pressed the close door button, then got off in the lobby and ran outside to press the walk button?
/sigh
really? just me?
People ain't dumb, and they catch on. Which creates pressure in the other direction as well. One the most common barriers to getting people to recycle correctly is the widely held belief -- frequently completely unfounded -- that all the stuff goes to the same dump anyway. Recycling centers are making online videos of the pickup and sorting process to battle back, but it's an uphill struggle -- people assume they're getting lied to.
After reaching the level cap, I'd join pug groups and in the role of "healer". I had gear with special effects that did nothing and created all manner of macros to create these effects while at the same time emoting that I was healing my target.
After the wipe, when they'd call me on it (I have yet to find an addon that will monkey with other people's trackers) I'd try to explain that I was doing this strictly for research and they were in the placebo group.
Somehow, this did not seem to appease them.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
All these examples seem a bit specific or they assume the people affected are all too dumb to realize someone's trying to fool them...
'In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the 'close door' button has no effect. Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact to the Wall Street Journal in 2003.
Around here most elevators don't even seem to have a "close" button, they do have an "open" button though. And if you press one of the "go to floor #n" buttons the doors tend to close immediately. As an example, in the building I live in the best way to get the doors to close quickly is to pass through the elevator door and make sure you're clear of the "don't squish the humans" sensor and then hit a floor button, door closes immediately and elevator gets going.
Similarly, many office thermostats are dummies, designed to give workers the illusion of control. "You just get tired of dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat," said Illinois HVAC specialist Richard Dawson. "Guess what? They quit calling you."
Duh. Of course people stop calling you, they're sweating their asses off and you show up and say "nothing wrong here" half a dozen times and then you install a thermostat that doesn't work. Most likely they just end up figuring out how to disable the alarm connected to the windows so they can get some relief that way (seriously, I've seen this problem in several workplaces, the building maintenance guys swear up and down that the ventilation system is fine yet one office which isn't even facing the sun most of the day has stuffy air and a constant temperature above 25 C, in the latest case they finally installed a thermostat that did nothing, we just stopped calling them about the issue (the thermostat was clearly not connected to anything)).
In 2004 the New York Times reported that more than 2,500 of the 3,250 "walk" buttons in New York intersections do nothing. "The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on."'"
Here in .se the buttons do work. In fact, if you don't press the button the light never turns green. You still have to wait until the lights for the cars are right though (which kind of sucks, it just switches the light for pedestrians from a default "you're not allowed to cross" to "please wait your turn".
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
My first tech job was working for a fortune 50 company as a technician for their centralized HVAC and lighting systems. This was in the early 90's and we used primitive controllers with early modems to centrally control everything from headquarters. Local control was never allowed in any facility under any circumstances. Attempts to intervene such as additional heat or cooling sources could readily be picked up on our end.
I remember once catching a loading dock where that had occurred and calling it in. The wall sensor had been broken by local personnel. We sent out a service technician to fix it and talked with local management (which seemed completely surprised that we found out so quickly). We ended up having the now fixed stat busted the following day, only that time people at the local facility were fired. In the event of noisy office workers, many technicians would put in a dummy thermostat for an illusion of control - and it did make a difference.
The benefit of these zealous control systems were huge. Long before being green was in vogue we did these things to save energy. In the time I was with the company they expanded from 600 facilities to 720 and kept their energy bill at 100 million US dollars. That's a 20% expansion of their facilities with a 0% expansion of their energy consumption. It may not be sexy or hip, might even feel totalitarian, but that is the kind of real world change that is needed for a greener future.
The close door and open door buttons seem to work as they should in the small office building where I work. However, they probably predate the 1990s and are constantantly breaking down! I have very rarely seen a walk button in NYC. I find it hard to believe there were ever 3,250 of them.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
When I was a young-hacker, I worked as a bellman.. It was slack work except when tour busses came in and then it was a scramble to get luggage up to the rooms. It meant multiple trips with a full cart and no passengers... What I couldn't handle was the long rides down to the lobby stopping at 10+ floors to pickup additional passengers... I soon discovered that if I held the 'door close' button while the elevator was descending, it would stop at the floors where people had pushed the 'down' button but the door wouldn't open. The elevator would stop. Hesitate for about 1.5 seconds, and then start moving again. The unfortunate drawback was that outside of the car, the 'down' light would go out and the waiting passengers would have to press it again to call for another elevator. I then learned that I didn't have to hold the door-close button. If I felt the car slow down and managed to press the button before the car came to a full stop, I could trigger the override.
Eventually, I got a copy of a master key (which I still have) that allowed me to just put the elevator in service mode and didn't have to override anything.
Agreed.
Also - I don't know about you, but when I press a "close doors" or a "use crosswalk" button and press it, and nothing happens, I tend to press it again. If there was a placebo effect in play, why would I bother pressing it again? The placebo effect suggests that I would be happy with the outcome, rather than stabbing relentlessly away at a soulless machine, like a rat trying to get a food pellet, muttering and cursing the infernal, non functional button and the soul sucking society it seems to embody, when all I want to do is get downstairs and across the street to a bar so I can drown my sorrows in a few glasses of gin and try to muster the courage to talk to that girl who is always there even though I know she's probably damaged goods and wouldn't give me the time of day besides...
I'm sorry, what were we talking about again?
Years ago my dad replaced the furnace and thermostat in my parents' house. What he didn't tell my mom was the new thermostat was installed in a different location in the house and he left the old one in its original location. Prior to this my mom was constantly pushing the thermostat up and down and making the house too hot or cold for everyone else. She continued this adjustment on the old disconnected thermostat for years after, apparently satisfied, even though it had no effect.
If the thermostats are anything like what we have where I work, they are connected, but as far as I can tell they are either incorrectly installed, or misconfigured. I blame contractors who are paid by the job, quickly disappear, and either don't know or don't care about how it's supposed to be done.
Don't agree it's nothing like a placebo. Granted, I need to RTFA, but you could design some interesting experiments that test whether people's PERCEPTION (e.g. it seemed like the elevator door did close faster even though it really didn't) was altered with these non-functional elements. That is like a placebo.
Where I live, the walk buttons have an effect, but won't alter the flow of traffic. If you don't push the button, the sign will never switch to "walk". However, pushing the button doesn't turn on the "walk" sign any sooner; it just makes sure to turn it on the next time the right light turns green. Only if there are no cars at (or coming up on) the intersection will it actually alter the order of traffic lights to let you walk sooner.
Then of course there are a couple of older intersections that always turn the "walk" light on no matter if someone has pushed the button or not.
And the close button on elevators is for impatient people. Seriously, you can't wait another whole second for the door to close? I've never needed to push a close door button because the doors were perfectly capable of closing on their own. I've only ever used the open button, to hold the elevator for people. If I were to make an elevator, I'd omit the close button entirely. Or put one in and have the elevator spew an insult every time it was pushed. Oooh, even better... shock the button pusher! Too bad I'd probably get sued for that one.
No, there is no "-1 I'LL NEVER ADMIT BEING WRONG!!!" mod.
This is just another example of the "Hawthorne Effect" - a phenomena observed that when workers had working conditions modified, their productivity increased. We have known since the 1930's that people behave differently when they believe they are being observed or that their environment is under their control, or that there is a mechanism to improve thier work environment. And this effect results whether or not these changes are true or effective.
Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
I HATE elevators with non-functioning close-buttons.
Eh. The Close Door button in the elevators in my building definitely work. They make the doors close immediately after fully opening - they stay open for about 3-4 seconds otherwise. And they are Otis elevators.
The pedestrian crossing buttons do something to. If you don't press them, the cross street/left turn light turns green immediately after the main street turns red and the Cross signal never comes on. I've gotten burned a couple of times by not pressing it.
most of them have no effect in normal operation, but when the elevator is in service mode (i.e. apartment move mode), then doors stay open until you press the close button.
There is usually a 'protected' way of keeping the door open, either in the form of an emergency knob/button (or otherwise red and do-not-press seeming) or as a key. Often there is a panel (which many elevators leave unlocked for convenience) which has this switch.
In my experience, the 'close' button is usually delayed so it isn't abused (try holding it for a few seconds and it will work). Smarter elevators will allow its use in certain limited circumstances.
I grew up in Seattle where, once upon a time you actually waited until you had a "walk" signal before crossing the street (though not so much anymore judging by what i've seen on recent visits home, insert "get off my lawn" comment here.) Thus it males me really frustrated when i get to the intersection near work in SoCal and find someone else standing next to the post with the button for the crosswalk signal and i assume they must have already pushed it. But then the light changes, the "walk" signal doesn't come on, and they just cross the intersection anyways while i am forced by habit to wait until the next cycle. I'm trying to train myself to elbow my way to the button and press it just to be sure, but as a generally non-confrontational person it's not something that comes naturally.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I've known for years now that close door buttons in elevators have no effect. I've been in dozens of elevators and have tried the button for the hell of it to no avail. I don't bother anymore. I always assumed there was some kind of associated safety law. What I don't get is why they keep the damn button there; I assume it's cheaper to do so than to remove the button for the US market. I do know for a fact that the button does work overseas. It's why I would try the button when I got back to the States.
Honestly, I don't know if in this particular case it's a placebo effect so much as Americans being conditioned to believe that anything in a public space is likely busted or not working properly. There seems to be a general state of disrepair in the US that I haven't really encountered in other countries. On the one hand, you've got ham-fisted oafs and outright vandals who are compelled to break everything in sight. And on the other hand, you've got service people who can't be bothered to do their jobs, or management which apparently doesn't take enough pride to pay to get things fixed. But then, if something keeps getting broken, eventually you just give up and leave it be.
Also, a person who sees a thermostat upon entering a room for a meeting will feel like a jerk calling to fix the temperature if he hasn't at least tried the thermostat first. When he attempts to adjust the thermostat there's a delay before even considering to call. Perhaps it just takes a bit to warm up (I've even seen some that make a hiss when you adjust it past the current temperature but still do not impact the temperature) so people end up waiting to see. By the time they realize the thermostat is definitely not working the meeting is 2/3 done and they don't want to bother calling to get it fixed for the next guy. That might be laziness or selfishness but it's not placebo effect.
You can always spot the visitors to London because they'll actually press the open door button on the underground trains.
"Ask your Doctor"
I know of a quite a few intersections where pedestrian traffic light won't turn green without the use of a button.
This reminds me of something I have always wondered about...why is it that some walk buttons are set up just to enable the 'walk' light?
The light will change on schedule, regardless of whether I press the button or not, but the little walking-guy symbol won't appear when the light changes unless I have pressed the walk button. The crossing light just stays on the hand / don't walk symbol.
WTF?
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
it is just a placebo that comes with every operating system
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
eh, sometimes you might almost get a beverage almost, but not entirely, completely unlike tea...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo_button
Oh for a mod point. I've come to look at the election process as voting for Coke or Pepsi when all I want is a glass of water. Transparent and no artificial additives.
People who like treated water and politics should not see them being made.
The green is extended a bit when the walk-light is used.
Plus everybody knows that if you press the button for your floor three times in a row, the doors close right away. Or nearly so. Sometimes you have to do it six times in a row, though.
If you press it and its non-functional, you're a fool for using a button that doesn't do anything.
If you don't press it and its functional, you're a fool for not using a button that would save you time.
I often get up early to jog or bike. At 6:00 AM, when I'm on a side street coming to an intersection with an arterial, and the light is red for me and green for the arterial, pressing the walk button will _immediately_ change the light for the arterial to yellow.
At 8:00 AM, however, with rush-hour traffic clogging up the arterial, the walk button appears to do nothing.
In one office that I used, the thermostat was not _designed_ to do nothing, but there were about three serious bugs in the implementation that kept it from working. Number one was that it wasn't hooked up in one place, number two was that its sense was reported the wrong way round in a different place, number three was that it controlled the wrong heating. So when after long complaints bug #1 was fixed, the temperature in the left half of a large office went down when the guys in the right half turned the temperature up. Just good that the room was too big to create a feedback loop.
Actually, I worked for a commercial HVAC controls company, and the thermostats that people think don't work actually do work.
We had a policy of setting them to allow a +/- 2 degree (F) adjustment. That's all most people want or need anyway, and anything more than +/- 5 degF will screw up the system's efficiency.
There were always serial whiners that wanted more than 2 degF swing on their stats, so we gave them 3 degF. If they kept it up, we'd lock their stat to 80 degF in the summer and 65 degF in the winter and disable the 2 degree adjustment entirely. Building management always allowed it, and we had remote management control over EVERYTHING. Chillers, boilers, fans, pumps, dampers, valves, air/water/steam, it was all controllable from a remote terminal.
Suggestion: don't piss these guys off. They can make you very uncomfortable. The BOFH stories are not an exaggeration.
The green is extended a bit when the walk-light is used.
Okay, now that makes some sense!
Now I'll have to get out my trusty stopwatch and test some of the lights around here to see if they actually do that, or if the city planners are just f%$*ing with us...
Thanks!
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
...65 degF in the winter and disable the 2 degree adjustment entirely.
So you end up with women bringing in 1.5kW heaters to place under their desks? <sarcasm>That's efficient and safe. </sarcasm>
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
So, I went to the link to read TFA, and realized that the TFS isn't a summary at all. It's just a copy/paste of the entire blog post with the line breaks taken out. It's amazing what constitutes "New for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" these days...
I used to work in an 36 floor office complex with elevators that had to be at least 30 years old at the time. I forgot the brand name (I'm leaning towards OTIS) but all the floor buttons were touch sensitive while the "open door" and "close door" were traditional buttons. Normally the "close door" button was ignored by the elevator controller, but every once in a while they would put one in "manually operated mode" for what I believe to be fire training. In fact in normal operation, we were more worried about keeping the doors open than trying to hurry up the elevator. It wasn't uncommon to occasionally get pinched by the door. The safety devices which were manual bumpers always kicked in, but it was never pleasant and always got something on your clothes.
Anyway, occasionally they would leave instructions taped on the control panel, and it read something like:
1. Place elevator in manual mode with key switch.
2. Press close door button.
3. Press number of floor.
4. After reaching floor and determining it's safe press open door button.
I assume the more modern elevators will automatically close the door when the number of floor button in pressed even in "manual mode". I always figured that it was cheaper to have the "close door" on a standard control panel and only connect it when a elevator controller actually used it. I didn't think the elevator companies intended it to be a placebo.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
In my experience, pressing the pedestrian button at a traffic light will increase the amount of time that the light will stay green for the corresponding direction of traffic by about an additional 15 to 20 seconds, giving people walking across additional time to clear the road. Also, if you don't press it, the pedestrian "Walk" sign doesn't even come on. They do *NOT* make the lights at a controlled intersection change any sooner. They never have, except at crosswalk intersections that are wholly pedestrian controlled in the first place, and I have openly mocked people in the past for believing otherwise.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In my building, the "Close door" elevator button works on the elevator that goes to the parking garage levels, but it's debatable if it does anything on the main elevators. Those seem to close so quickly, they are often closing before you have even pressed your floor button! It takes some insane impatience (and impressively fast floor-button-pushing,) to want them to close any faster than they already do.
Crosswalk buttons in Portland are a mixed bag. There are some that are ancient, and likely don't do anything, and there are some that are required to trigger the signal. Then there are a couple newly installed ones downtown that I don't know if they do anything or not. Most of downtown has no buttons, they just turn when the light turns; but there are a couple intersections where they added them. I'm so impatient I rarely wait for the signal, I just wait for traffic to die down (as is pretty much standard in Portland,) but I suppose some day I'll have to wait and see if it changes WITHOUT pushing the button.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
In some intersections it prevents the oncoming traffic from getting a left turn signal.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
This is just a perception and satisfaction trick. This is not the same as the brain actually tricking the body into getting healthy.
I think the "door close" buttons cause the crosswalk lights to change, and the "walk" buttons cause the elevator doors to close.
Beyond all that, the placebo effect is "inactive agent is applied and there is a result because the patient believes the agent is actually active". The buttons, etc. mentioned in the article are not placebos because the effect happens even if the button is not pressed. The button does not effect the actual outcome, as a placebo does, but rather give the person pressing the button something to do, thereby making them feel less helpless and thus more patient in the matter.
What is described is more "Here, stupid monkey, play with this to make yourself feel useful while waiting for the inevitable to happen.", rather than "He had a physiological reaction to a sugar pill that we told him was actual medicine for his condition."
This reminds me of my recent trip to Denmark. Spent most nights walking a mile or so back to my hotel for the night. My buddy and I discovered much to our delight that the "walk" buttons actually worked!. Not only did they work, but the response was dependable and immediate!
One night we got intoxicated and tried to time the light so we could force another car to run the red. The results were not nearly as disasterous as you may think. The results were, however, very funny.
I suppose this is one reason the buttons do nothing in most places now. Not everyone will use this power for good.
Did Microsoft designers have to take this to heart. I wonder if this is in their cubicles as a little pick me up. "Add dummy controls to make it seem like they have some control". I'm pretty sure the refresh button for wireless is a dummy button.
I agree, any time I read these articles they never mention that close door buttons are for key turn control mode. They just act like they are put in the panel to please people.
I have my doubts about all therm controls, but In most of the buildings I have worked in I'm told that they only work when the computer is down or during off hours. Even during these times it isn't adjusting the temp that changes anything they clam you have to hold a button down on the panel for x number of seconds and then you get an arbitrary length of air (e.g. an hour).
Either way, normally the nobs and switches which have no function are either outdated redundant controls that used to work. Or only work under certain conditions like the closed door button.
Momento Mori
If the issue is that people walking up to a light expect to hit a button, I'd assume they'd be just as satisfied seeing a sign telling them that the lights will change for them.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I was in a hotel 2 months ago, and I remember thinking how stupid it was to have a "close elevator" button. I even remarked to my girlfriend how pointless it was, unless you wanted to knock out a quick one on the ground floor.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I think it would be beneficial for elevators to close doors and move on if the passengers are ready. I suspect most elevators do make use of this input to increase throughput. Perhaps only Otis elevators don't use this input. A good slogan for their competitors would be "Our Close buttons work." Take a look at this week's Nova episode "Trapped in an Elevator". http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/trapped-elevator.html They talk about how one hotel had a 30% increase in elevator throughput by getting users to input the floor they wanted rather than just use up/down buttons. They could then pick up all people going to the same floor and optimize which elevator to send.
Obviously, different elevators made by different companies, installed in different eras may well work differently. I am an elevator design Engineer for someone other than Otis. Our door close buttons work during normal operation on the majority of the thousands of elevators we've built and installed over the past quarter century that I've been designing them. There are some qualifications, though. The door close button won't work unless the elevator door is all the way open (door open limit switch is operated).
In "Independent Service" mode, the doors will stay open indefinitely until they are closed by constant pressure on either a car call button or the door close button. Releasing the button before you get the door all the way closed and are leaving the floor will allow the door to reopen.
In "Fire Service" mode where emergency personnel have taken control of the elevator, the Door Close button is operational, but only in constant pressure mode. The same is true of the Door Open button. So, if the door is closed, you can press the open button and the door will open as long as you keep pressure on it or until it gets all the way open. Once it's all the way open, it will stay open. Similarly the Door Close button will close the door as long as it's pressed, but will re-open if you release it before it gets all the way closed.
Note that elevators designed using 1987 and prior years ASME codes will probably work differently. Many from that era don't have a Door Close button at all.
Note, too, that some municipalities have used alternate codes and the operation will be different than what I've described.... Chicago, I'm looking at you.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
People complain about the things they want fixed first, so the cross-walk button takes a back seat to the monster potholes. The elevator button takes a back seat to the building doors not locking. The thermostat takes a back seat to firing the incompetent guys who cant get the furnace to work right.
How many placebo buttons did you code into your last application?
Well not now since you and the article ruined it for me.
The world is how you make it
During my stint in pizza delivery, I became painfully aware of the uselessness of probably 75% of Close Door buttons on elevators during normal operation. It's funny that it almost never works at hospitals, which you would expect would share my sense of urgency. It was highly frustrating.
Walk buttons are another one I thought had to be true. It's a bigger problem in Bellevue that Seattle, though. Often in Seattle, the light on the main thoroughfare will stay green until it detects a car stopped on the cross street. At certain intervals the Don't Walk sign crossing the cross street will flash, but it will go back to walk unless there's a car (in which case it's Don't Walk in both directions) or someone actually hits the button to cross the thoroughfare. This is a good system, I think.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
At least for the crosswalk buttons and elevator close door buttons.
For crosswalks, it doesn't take long to notice the lack of effect when the only time the light changes is when a car eventually comes up on the low-traffic cross street. I have had to cross against a red light so often, I don't even bother pushing the button anymore. Of course, I just figured they were consistently broken just about everywhere and that nobody ever bothered repairing them. I had not considered that they were intentionally disabled.
For elevators, I can't remember a time when the close door button ever did anything. I always figured it was there for the firemen when they used their keys to take control of the elevator.
As for office thermostats, I've never messed with them, so I've never had the opportunity to notice that they don't work either; now I'll have to check that out at my office. With my luck, it probably will work, and we'll all fry.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
The goggles.
They do nothing.
Coke Pepsi and Water are not the choices here.
It's more like Coke, Pepsi or a bag of salty nuts.
As soon as you try the salty nuts, you're right back to Coke or Pepsi.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I've seen elevators where if you press the "open door" button to abort the natural door closing to help a straggler, then the "close door" button does immediately start the door closing. This is easy to test, by using "open door", and timing how long it waits until it tries to close on its own. Do that a few times to verify that it is consistent, and then you can test "close door" and show it had an effect.
Our world is nothing but lies.
And the "close door" button appeared to work. The door closed immediately after pressing it. This building normally holds the doors open for a long time, too; the door would not have normally closed as quickly.
FWIW, this building is pretty old (1920s?) and just had all its elevators modernized with new cars (and I'm presuming new controls, etc). Can't remember if it was an Otis or not.
Speaking of Otis, I wonder if what they mean was that the "default" configuration has no close-door button at all, not just a dummy close door button. A ton of elevators have neither a close nor open door button.
Okay, so you can fool people into thinking those buttons do something. Is there a point to it though? Elevators in this building, the doors stay open for 30 seconds, that's 5 seconds of the door being open when I need it to be open and 25 seconds of "why isn't it closing?" Some engineer things that's an ideal amount of time in any situation despite what the passengers might think?
That will depend on how you look at it. If taking the placebo means you will still die of the disease you take the pill for, the author interpretation is valid.
Just ask the commuters waiting at the red in the cross-street. They know in their guts that it takes longer when someone does that.
There's one part of this "the 'Close Door' button is disconnected" legend that really bothers me: the purported behavior is so trivially easy to test, but we keep falling back on "Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact", even though this is precisely the type of appeal to authority that we are all so quick to condemn when we observe it elsewhere. Several commenters have pointed out that they don't see this behavior in the elevators they encounter - so isn't it about time that we all did some rigorous scientific analysis?
Here, I'll start.
My own experience suggests that the close button often works, so that's the hypothesis I'm going to test. The elevator in my building is a Kone (unfortunately, I have no other information about it - no serial number was listed, and the State of Georgia doesn't seem to post elevator inspection details online).
After the doors first opened and I walked in, I observed a roughly 5 second delay on my stopwatch before the doors attempted to close. The same delay-before-closing was present when I called an elevator but did not step on, and when I took the elevator to a different floor, whether or not I stepped off. The delay before closing was reduced to three seconds for subsequent closing attempts if I interrupted the first closing of the doors with my arm. These measurements served as my baseline for subsequent testing.
I began a fresh test by stepping out of the elevator, letting the door close, and then calling it again. Upon entering the elevator, I immediately pressing the "Door Close" button without first selecting a floor, and observed the door closing immediately after. The same behavior occurred when I selected a floor before pressing "door close", but no change from the baseline was observed when selecting a floor without pressing "door close".
Conclusion: For this particular elevator model, the "door close" button does indeed cause the doors to close sooner.
I don't have a way of quickly determining whether there are, in fact, elevators out there that have intentionally disabled close buttons, but I've got a working theory about where this legend is coming from.
First, every time I've heard the claim that the "Door Close" button doesn't work, it has come from an Otis Elevator representative. It's quite possible that this is a claim that is only true for Otis elevators, but is only reported because there's very little news in putting on a ThyssenKrupp representative saying, "Our 'Door Close' buttons actually work!"
Second, I have been in elevators where selecting a floor would automatically trigger a door close event. It's plain to see that with this design, a door close button is redundant - but it's also easy to imagine a customer refusing to buy an elevator without a "Door Close" button. Adding a nonfunctional button allows the sales team to get that extra checkmark on the feature list, and also makes for a great story about "dumb management decisions" for the engineers to pass around.
I'd encourage you all to experiment with this on your own to see if this also applies for other manufactures. If you e-mail me your observations (peter@stormlash.net), I'll tabulate the data and provide it to anyone who is interested. I recommend the following test rubric:
1) How long does the door take to close when no buttons are pressed?
2) Does the time for the door to close decrease when a previous close attempt has been interrupted?
3) Does "door close" cause this time to decrease when no floor is selected?
4) Does selecting a floor cause this time to decrease?
5) Does pressing "door close" with a floor selected change anything?
I was going to put a sig here, but I had already submitted the message.
I'm generally amazed when a button actually DOES work. (I lived in a building where the elevator doors instantly responded. That was great.)
When buttons do nothing, I just fume at the city or whatever agency I happen to live under the management of.
But Placebo?
Far too much is attributed to that effect. I think there must be a sliding scale of environmental awareness where some people are a lot more easily fooled than others. Heck, I know this to be true. I wonder if perhaps those who cry, "Placebo Effect!" are among those who are more easily fooled and thus have a hard time working out what reality is actually doing most of the time. Perhaps this is why science is so important to them? Their instincts are poor and thus they need a reliable system of reality reading, not to fall back on or use in conjunction with, but as their primary guide to existence.
Hm. Interesting.
-FL
The point about office thermostats is true where I work. I have a nice new office complete with thermostat. The temperature regularly climbs to beyond 82 Degrees F (that's ~28C), when I complained about it, they told me to use the thermostat to adjust the temp. That was the point where I told them that I watched the process of construction as they built the office, and that I know that the thermostat is a dummy (looks good, but isn't connected to anything, wires just dangling in the wall). At this point they realized they were busted, but still wouldn't do anything for me. The claim is that fixing this for me would require the re-balancing of the the entire building, and they weren't going to do it for just one person. So I keep a fan going for when it's too warm, and a sweater for wen it's too cold. For them the ruse still worked, I don't complain any longer, 'cause I know that nothing will change.
Really? Because last I checked over half the country had decided to vote with their feet and walk away from the whole debacle. Whether you like it or not that counts as a vote too. A vote of no confidence.
Every election that percentage seems to get smaller as people wise up and consider the lack of real change an indication of a rigged game. If the game is rigged or useless like those crosswalk buttons, then why play? As the trend continues to accelerate and less and less people buy into the joke our political process has become the percentages of people refusing to vote will continue to grow.
How low of a voter turn out does there have to be before the game ends for lack of players?
Have a Virgin Mobile USA smartphone? Give VMRoms.com a try!
There is no placebo effect. I just get mad at a button not doing as its marked.
--- rapper/producer/bachelorette party stripper
"Further, people STILL don't know everything that is in the healthcare law and that is STILL creating future uncertainty. It's pointless to hire and train new people today if you don't know if you'll be able to afford them in 6 months or a year." Nice Fox News talking points. As an employer, I can tell you that this particular Fox News talking point is absolute hogwash. It's so wrong, it's laughable. Employers don't decide to hire or not hire people based on taxes. Maybe huge, tax-dodging employers do (ie: Haliburton, Wal-Mart), but small and mid size employers hire people when they need them, regardless of what the tax rate is now or in the future. Do you honestly think that Joe Blow sandwich shop owner thinks, "I really need to hire another person to cover the morning shift, but I'd better hold off because my tax bill may go up by 3% next year"? C'mon. You don't have to be a business owner to understand this. You just have to be able to think. The whole "uncertainty" story that Fox News/Republicans have drummed up is just plain stupid. Nobody knows what the future holds.
I don't respond to AC's.
Seriously- I worked in a freezing office, and no matter how many times we called the building and they claimed they raised the temperature on the thermostats, it would still be freezing in the office. We are talking my hands are so cold that it is affecting my typing accuracy cold. We suspected it had something to do with the thermostat being near our network closet which could get quite hot, thus raising the temperature near the thermostat.
But anyway, I decided to solve the problem by going on Amazon and buying the cheapest space heater I could find- it was about $10 before shipping. It had a plastic circular grill on the front of it. I had it for about a week, and I noticed some "holes" in the concentric circle rings, which I found unusual because I thought they were unbroken when it was new. I went in for a closer look, and saw that the plastic grill was melting, and had I left for the night without shutting it off, I could have quite easily burned the office down.
I called up the building after that and showed them my melted mess of a space heater. All of a sudden the problem finally fixed itself.
How low of a voter turn out does there have to be before the game ends for lack of players?
That's an interesting thought experiment. I don't know what, if any provisions there are for zero votes, except for a few basic things. For example, a tie in the electoral college means the Speaker of the House, or VP makes the decision, I forget which.
Now let's say there is ONE registered voter. Then it gets more interesting, especially if the candidates could be assured of that voter's identity. "If elected, I promise to plant money trees on your block".
Before these idealized cases, you have voter rolls shrinking to tiny percentages. That in and of itself isn't terribly interesting unless demographics shrink at different rates.
For example, a low turnout of Blacks vs. Whites. What happens then? Actually, that kind of thing is really just an extension of regular politics without low turnout; but it seems like a group that's already a minority would be doing itself an even greater disservice by voting less.
IMHO, some groups already do themselves harm by being a "reliable bloc". When the party already has your vote, they don't have to please you.
I suspected the effects of placebo's were all in the mind, but until the research is conclusive, I'm going to keep taking my placebos. Not taking any chances.
Department of Education. No rise in student's test scores in any category since the department's inception and billions of dollars wasted.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
Oh, how funny it is to read the complaints you citizens of the United States have... Because, you know, most of you seem very comfortable at getting the sensation of freedom, democracy and security when the price is payed by the decomposing bodies of your soldiers in a remote corner of the world. Thus, gathering money to pay for the healthcare of the poor seems pretty cheap to me.
In fact, that very same thing is done in a lot of countries, both richer and poorer than the U.S. If you had a little more empathy - starting with your fellow citizens and then towards the rest of the world - there'd be no stopping you. You'd have to fight no wars, because you'd have no enemies. Of course, you could argue there's no stopping you right now, the very way you are... but that'd just be you being yourselves.
(end of rant)
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
One of the coworkers in my office brought in a space heater and placed it under her desk not too long ago.
You're darn tootin' we notice!!!! They HVAC people stopped getting calls because people got tired of adjusting the thermostat that never worked and calling the HVAC people. While we may sometimes push that "Close Door" button on the elevator, those of us who use an elevator long enough have realized the timing hasn't been effected since "the late '90s". Isn't New York in enough debt without having to install extra push buttons on every corner of the city if the buttons aren't going to do anything?
And psychologists wonder why Americans are so up tight, their blood pressure skyrocketing, etc... because the darn "conveniences" don't flippin' work! And apparently, they don't work on purpose. And then we get felt up and/or violated when we use the convenience of quickly traveling from one place to another.
there's no master scheduling algorithm - it's up to the dept. of works to configure a variety of sensors, a delicately-timed routine, and/or general traffic patterns to work together.
In a small town, you may get a simple 9-5 pattern with no dynamism, or as in Boulder, you have pressure sensors in the bike lanes.
"Wow, in *my* town, the lights work!", meanwhile in Town X, "Wow, in *my* town the lights don't work!"
(as an aside, I'd like to move to 'Town X' or at least visit for the t-shirt..)
I work in a building in NYC. Close door button? It wouldn't matter if it worked or not, because the doors close as soon as the sensors are clear (and not all the sensors work that well).
Walk button? Nobody pushes them. People in NYC cross streets whenever the light is green or traffic is clear, or they think they can make it without getting run over.
Office thermostats are another matter. IME, it doesn't take long for people to figure out which thermostats work and which don't. But I've always worked with engineers.
The "Reply to This" button is decorative.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
I once worked as a maintenance engineer in a broadcast facility. The first complaint I was assigned was the news audio console. The report was that the microphone channel was weak and the announcer had to stand too close to the mic.
The news director demonstrated the problem (by showing me where he was standing to get normal audio level and where he used to stand) and then told me he knew which chip needed to be replaced, because it had been replaced before to cure the same problem
The chip he identified was a logic gate, which seemed unlikely to be the problem. But it was a 25-cent part and in a socket, so I replaced it. The client declared everything back to normal and thanked me.
Later, studying the circuit confirmed that there was nothing about the circuit that would lose audio gain if this chip failed - it would fail on, off or noisy.
On a hunch, I kept the removed chip in a bin by itself.
In a couple of weeks, the same complaint was back from the same guy. This time I "repaired" it by putting the chip in that I removed last time. Again, the client was happy at regaining his usual distance from the mic.
About 3 times a month, he would write up the same complaint, and from then on, I replaced the chip with the same one I had removed on the previous service call.
I never told him what I was doing, but the rest of the maintenance department knew and many lulz were vocalized.
Elevator buttons sometimes work. Pedestrian buttons sometimes work. It isn't a placebo. At my work, we have lots of expensive equipment that is temperature sensitive. There are thermostats around and they appear to be hooked up to something. Because after 2.5 years of malfunctioning equipment, hundreds of calls to facilities, and countless thermostat adjustments, I ripped one off the fucking wall just to see.
Buy coke.
SOLED OUT.
push coin return.
nothing
push it again
nothing
buy diet code.
pissed I was forced to buy diet
Next we'll find out that the "Update Windows" button does nothing.
Table-ized A.I.
Perhaps people do realize that the thermostat is not hooked up? Obviously management has told them to go fuck themselves in a passive aggressive manner so they just stop complaining. That's not a placebo it is excepting the reality of your situation.
If you read the signs attached to the walk buttons at crosswalks it usually says something like: "Press Button Wait for Walk Signal" Note that nowhere in that statement is anything tying the button press to the appearance of the walk signal. Waiting for the walk signal is merely good advice in most places that aren't California.
I take around 23 placebos a day, and I feel great!!!!!!!!!
Here in Korea the close door buttons actually do work, which is great. You push it and it immediately closes.
Really speeds up the ride when you have a lot of people pushing both directions so they can just "get on" leaving the elevator being called to empty floors.
The elevators here also allow you to "unpush" a floor. If you accidentally hit one just push it again and it'll unselect. Maybe they do have them back home, but I'd never seen one that did that back in Canada.
Of course the placebo effect covers more than drugs. Take the bicycle helmet for example - these foam plastic hats are capable of providing a limited amount of energy dissipation when a person falls of a stationery bicycle aided by nothing more than gravity (i.e. ISO 5Kg headform with a 1.5m drop). More than that requires suspension of the laws of physics.
Now how many people claim to believe their life was saved by one of these hats when they think 1000Kg+ of car whacked their skull at 50Km/h? (I'm not saying they were hit with that force, just that they think they were.) I know one person who insisted the same helmet had saved them at least half a dozen times. Most of these people aren't stupid, many are very intelligent, they've just been bombarded with nonsense (otherwise known as marketing or politics) and then handed a placebo to strap on their noggins. And it works - in that they believe that is, its a health & safety disaster but thats irrelevant.
Why would anybody even think the placebo effect is restricted to drugs when large sections of public society are based on its use?
I clicked expecting a discussion of the article, and instead I got a placebo discussion about US healthcare reform and taxes!
You don't need a "pedestrian phase." Pedestrians walk at the same time as traffic moving in their direction.
For one thing, motorists turn left or right on green, which may cross the path of pedestrians. For another, numerous signals aren't on a timer but instead on a metal detector, such that one direction stays red unless a vehicle with sufficient metal is stopped behind the stop line. These have a hard time picking up bicycles, let alone pedestrians; a cyclist often has to wait ten minutes for an SUV to pull up behind and trigger the metal detector.
I disagree with the "idiocracy" tag on this article. It is perfectly rational behavior for me to push the "walk" button at a crosswalk even if there's a decently high chance it will have no effect. Why? Because the cost to me is very small vs. a potentially large payoff if it actually does work.
Assuming the button doesn't work, how do you actually get to cross the road?
If the button doesn't work then it means that the streetlights cannot turn red (for car traffic) and that means that there will be vehicle traffic indefinitely. Is there some kind of automated system that stops traffic at regular intervals to allow for pedestrians to cross?
As more and more people refuse to vote each individual vote is worth more. So keep staying home, that way my vote means more.
Do you Gentoo!?
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1854100&cid=34168942
We have a money sink causing most bankruptcies today that we NEED to deal with and it is called "medical expenses."
The medical industry as a whole are breaking the USA more than the military complex. To argue that a change will make it worse as a reason for doing nothing is more than conservative or selfish; it is foolish. Something else NEEDS to be tried. We will end up in a mess anyhow so we may as well try to dig ourselves out. If we do poorly, we end up in a bigger hole and go broke faster but to sit and just wait for the inevitable -- why just give up? We should put up a fight.
Its not like socialized medicine hasn't been heavily studied and attempted in many ways - there are examples to learn from. Its also not somewhere where we have the time and money to sit around waiting for the PERFECT solution. We need to act -- the sooner the better. If we had addressed this issue 50+ years ago we'd have something to redo, repair, or build upon... oh wait! we do-- Medicare! Most wouldn't give it up, its popular-- it needs to be built upon and some of the past "fixes" need to be removed but those are details.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I read this a while back and went hmmm. /.
So it seems its done the rounds enough to appear on
Whilst its a great party story (one of the best!), I'm calling BULLSHIT on this one.
The close door buttons on all the lifts I use around the city most certainly work (eg. you can override the open-door button mid-move with the close-door button).
Ditto the traffic light triggers.
.
Sorry but....
Bnerrrrrk.
Rewind.
Try again.
http://www.google.com/search?q=apkapp2backgrounddaemonprocessengine.exe
That counts as "can safely be ignored". In contrast the Two Parties would start getting nervous if those people actually went to the ballot box and voted.
As long as the winners of the game make the laws. And the police, military, banks etc enforce the laws, what makes you think the game would end just because most voters don't vote?
It's even easier for the winners if most of the voters took themselves out of the game.
So it's not like taking placebo. It's like taking vitamins.
I have come to suspect that most elevator close buttons don't actually work as we want them too and that walk buttons are unlikely to be in use simply for the hell it would place on traffic shaping, but I still hammer on them if I am in a hurry. Why? You never know when you might get some results. We don't need them to work, we need them to keep hope alive.
So we are like lab rats.
Most of the walk buttons doesn't work, but you can never be sure if this particular button works or not, so you press it anyway. Otherwise you risk standing there for ages like stupid who doesn't know how to press a button.
Actually, this is very well established - random rewards build habits far more efficiently than consistent rewards. It's how people get addicted to gambling.
Basically, this emergent situation that's been created where sometimes pushing a button has a positive, rewarding effect and sometimes it doesn't is perfect for ensuring that all buttons get pushed.
Stop repeating this FALSE story. The close button may not work in a few elevators but they work in plenty of others. The close buttons work just fine in all in the elevators at my company in Mountain View.
Try getting out of your building once in a while. EVERY ELEVATOR IN JAPAN the doors close IMMEDIATELY when pressing the button. Also, Japanese elevators generally don't have light based censors to detect if the door is blocked. They only have the pressure switches.
and to the people that think the walk buttons don't work. They PROVABLY DO WORK at MOST intersections. They may or may not work at downtown intersections but they most certainly work in most suburbs where often the lights always stay green in one direction unless there is some reason for them not to (like a car in the other direction or someone pressing the walk button).
So maybe if they figure out how to market themselves like Pepsi markets Mountain Dew to young people, the Libs can gain a few seats.
1. Elevators:
- Some have the button de-activated during normal operation. Some do not.
- All of them work during Fire Operation or Service modes
- One the ones that the button does work during normal operation, you usually have to actually hold it down as opposed to just pressing it.
- If anybody presses a button outside the elevator, it will over-ride the door close button (most of the time).
I work in a building which was built 5 years ago, has an Otis elevator, and the close door buttons work just fine. My wife works in one across town built in the 50's and the close door buttons do not work.
2. Crosswalks:
Buttons DO work, depending on where you are and how the light is setup.
- Timer-only modes the button is 'disabled' or ignored, just like the sensor in the street (or the camera on the pole) won't do anything for cars.
- Trigger-modes the button is the only way for a pedestrian to get the cycle to change.
- Some lights will only turn green when triggered by a car for long enough to get 2 cars through before going back to the 'primary' direction. If you press the crosswalk it will remain green for the full normal cycle length.
But the main reason why they leave the buttons on the disabled signals (aside from removal costs) is in case they need to change the lights, the timing, etc.
3. Thermostats:
- That trick only works if the people in the office are a bunch of idiots. It can also backfire without warning, because if the boss finds out it's not hooked up then the HVAC guy appears incompetent and isn't going to get a contract renewal.
This was a ThyssenKrupp design: http://twin.thyssenkrupp-elevator.com/#/en/entdecken
http://virtualize.wordpress.com/
It's not 'The Placebo effect' it's A placebo effect. There are different types.
When someone buys something expensive, they will overlook any flaws for a period of time.
But, the articel seems to confuse placebo effect with the psychological effect of control. They are NOT the same thing.
And just for the record, Placebo effects never fix anything. EVER.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just complain loudly at the local authorities they have the power to fix [a misconfigured loop detector].
I already call my city's traffic operations department whenever a signal takes more than four minutes to change. They fix some of the detectors, but some still go unfixed, possibly for the reason I'll explain next.
Also, if you can see the loops in the road (those black squares) put your bike on the edges
I already do this. The trouble is that a few of these loops are much longer than the typical 6 foot square and appear to have been sized for tractor-trailers, and adjusting them to pick up even a bicycle and a motorcycle parked on the same detector at the same time (yes, this has happened, and the light still failed, with the motorcyclist next to me running the red light once cross traffic and oncoming left turn traffic were clear) would cause them to pick up cars and trucks in adjacent lanes.
we the public are dumb ...there are a lot of stuff the government are hiding out there
I feel the need to point something out: the placebo effect in *no way* suggests that you would be happy with the outcome. It suggests that you would believe that an action that had no effect on the outcome, did in fact have an effect.
The placebo effect can result in people feeling healthy when getting fake medicine. It can also result in people feeling miserable when given fake poison. Just because placebos are most used in medicine, that doesn't mean placebos *are* medicine.
Congrats to you for knowing a little better than the populace, but for many people, these buttons do act as a placebo.
People press the crosswalk button to cross the street sooner, and I would say if you did a controlled experiment, one group with a placebo button, one group without any button, and one group with an operating button, the two groups with a button would perceive a faster light change time than the group without a button.
Same with thermostats, and same with elevator close buttons.
I'm getting a feeling that the people in this post who are saying "the author is not describing the placebo effect!" are just finding a passive way to smugly say that they are smarter than the average bear, and that they are above such ignorance. But the author is most definitely describing the placebo effect.
I thought the walk buttons were for the blind? Some of them have speakers with audio for red/yellow/green.