Ding ding ding, correct answer! OP's target audience was people who are supposed to be using an API endpoint. It's self-evident OP can write clearly enough to communicate with the target audience.
> Speaking to people in a meeting allows them to emote, express difficulty of understanding, understand the sentiment and priority of what they're hearing -- and most of all, it allows them to listen rather than read. People speak at a much lower information density, and this is a less taxing form of communication.
Is that why everything is a Youtube video these days instead of written articles?
The real danger of Tik Tok and Youtube is that it allowed people who can't communicate using writing onto the Internet.
Yes, see my comment below. Memo -> meeting, book -> podcast / audiobook, newspaper article -> 10min youtube video, even, meme -> yt-short/tiktok
People are naturally motivated to watch, listen, and interact with other people. There's less a need to explain why cognitive effort is required, lower risk to bounce-off the format because it's to difficult/boring/frustrating/etc. We're already primed to expend effort interacting with others.
I think there's also something more naturally-fit to our attention spans in oral media. Whilst people frequently claim our attention spans are dropping -- I think this is false (and some research agrees). Instead, media is being adapted to fit what our attention spans always were.
It is just in reading, and engaging with long-format content, our minds frequently drifted. We frequently stoped paying attention and returned, over and over.
Instead, with shorter oral media we largely pay more attention but over shorter intervals.
A conversation also proceeds to manage attention/interest/etc. well, in somewhat dynamically adapting itself to the level of cognitive effort its participants are willing to spend.
Certainly I find myself naturally adapting my phrasing, humor, and so on according to the people i'm talking to -- based on whether they are showing interest, listening, understanding and so on. This is how attention should always have been managed.
Writing always was, in my view, a necessary evil for the vast majority of purposes to which it was put. Now, not all, of course -- we still need checklists, scripts, technical notes, accounting books, and the like.
> Yes, see my comment below. Memo -> meeting, book -> podcast / audiobook, newspaper article -> 10min youtube video, even, meme -> yt-short/tiktok
Yeah, a dog can understand spoken words but can't read a memo. We should strive to use our human faculties and hold others to that standard, instead of lowering ourselves to communicating like animals.
> I tend to be very exacting in my word choice. If I used a specific word, I meant it. Many people I find speak in what I would describe as tone poems.
Nah fish sauce is different. You can give most midwesterners fish and chips or worcestershire and they’ll be fine with it. But many will find fish sauce initially pungent and repulsive until they get used to it
> Culturally, though, it’s because that over half of the population doesn’t know that they would benefit from trains
No it’s not. Everyone in America goes to Disney World, which was made by a train nerd and you can’t even drive into the parks. Everyone goes there, rides around the trains and walkable areas, and then goes home to Ohio and drives around in their giant SUV.
It’s not because people don’t know about trains. It’s because they don’t value the things you do, and they value things you don’t, like having distance from strangers and being able to buy a lot of stuff and cart it around with them everywhere.
All my family is immigrants from Bangladesh. They’re not steeped in generations of American car culture. But, for some reason, car culture is the thing they assimilate into most easily. My cousin was living in Queens (where all the recent Bangladeshi immigrants are) and moved to Dallas. She’s thrilled about having all the space for her kids to run around, the apartment with a pool, etc. She doesn’t miss having to schlep her kids on the subway around aggressive homeless people, people singing to themselves, panhandlers, etc.
That’s fun, because I’m from a third generation Dallas family :) I hope they enjoy Dallas and all Texas has to offer.
Dallas, TX has continually voted in expanding its DART Rail funding the past 40 years. It has the most miles of intercity rail in the entirety of the South. It has the most light rail, by mileage, built in the entirety of the US. It just opened up an entirely new rail line through the suburbs (and only the suburbs) in March, and is its third(!) line which connects directly to DFW airport, which makes it the most rail-connected airport in the United States, and tied with Shanghai, Tokyo and London for the world.
I also personally currently live on a farm in California, and am an advocate of HSR. I believe many of those in similar areas are afraid of rail because they have never experienced its benefits, and change without knowledge is scary.
So please forgive me if I say that you are incorrect in both your assessment of how the majority of Dallas, Texas supports rail and your assumption of what I value.
And regarding your point about Disney World, I believe you are actually agreeing with me. Disney is one of the only places in the US it makes more sense to use the train or shuttle than a car. It does not in most of the US. Many people go to Disney World and experience for the first time how well trains can work for day-to-day transit, if designed well and intentionally. People will use what is most convenient, immigrant or not — most people (including me) do not take trains out of some principled stance, they do so when it’s more convenient. And my argument is we should make it more convenient, safety and all.
> So please forgive me if I say that you are incorrect in both your assessment of how the majority of Dallas, Texas supports rail and your assumption of what I value.
I'm correct in my assumption about what you value. But you're correct in your assumption about what other people value.
> People will use what is most convenient, immigrant or not — most people (including me) do not take trains out of some principled stance, they do so when it’s more convenient.
Right, and virtually nobody in the Dallas, Texas area actually takes transit themselves. The proof of what they value is right there in their revealed preferences.
> It’s not because people don’t know about trains. It’s because they don’t value the things you do, and they value things you don’t, like having distance from strangers and being able to buy a lot of stuff and cart it around with them everywhere.
But isn't this pretty fungible? Like it can't be that all the people genetically predisposed to like high density neighborhoods and biking to the grocery store happen to be in the Netherlands.
Frankly, if you've never lived in a place with clean, reliable, fast trains, you probably would be disillusioned and would never go to the train life. Or if your public infrastructure is deemed "for poor people".
Back to my original point, it's a cultural problem.
I’m probably a top 5% train nerd for the U.S. I took trains to work primarily from 2012-2020, in NYC, Philly, Baltimore, and DC. I used to ride Amtrak from Baltimore to DC every morning. I love Tokyo’s train system. I go there every year and I always take the train. But when I went there with my wife and three kids, I took a lot of Ubers! You can’t fit our double stroller with big America bags of toys and snacks on a business hours subway in Tokyo.
Americans love choice and they love stuff. They fill their cars with their stuff drive around on their own schedule without having to watch a clock or think about what’s near a train line and what isn’t. (Even with Tokyo’s amazing railway network, you have to think about that!) My wife drives to three different grocery stores 20 miles apart to get exactly the products she wants. The idea of just accepting whatever brand of hamburger buns they have at the store that’s conveniently on the train line between our house and work is completely alien.
To live within a Japanese system, Americans would have to change a bunch of other things about their culture. We’d have to give our kids independence to take the train themselves, instead of spending every saturday driving them around to 3 different far flung activities. We’d have to learn to appreciate what’s conveniently available, instead of the exact thing we want.
And not even Tokyo’s amazing train network makes it convenient to juggle two working spouses and school drop off and pickup for three kids. What line is convenient to your house, both parents work, and all three kids’ schools? The Japanese don’t even try to solve that problem.
I lived for many years next to a train station in NJ. I could readily take the train in to Manhattan, but for the hours I'd be there in evenings and on weekends, it was much more convenient and faster to drive in. My town was far enough out that the cost was slightly cheaper to drive (before the congestion fee). I then had the freedom to leave at any time without concern for the schedule.
> My town was far enough out that the cost was slightly cheaper to drive (before the congestion fee)
Aside from culture, this is another aspect which they touch on in the article. Japan doesn't have public parking. You're only allowed to buy a car if you have access to a parking spot. Tokyo is full of lots but they're all paid lots that charge in 30-60 min increments. There's also a lot of congestion zones in Tokyo which make driving in the city very expensive. Companies that do deliveries in the city often have a company car (or fleet of such) which lets them drive to destinations.
Overnight workers who do spend significant times at work before/after the trains stop do drive in. Most Japanese families in Tokyo live in suburbs surrounding the city and will walk, bike, or drive to a nearest train station to commute in.
I'm fairly far out from Boston/Cambridge but I'm pretty much the same situation. Going in for a commute (or 9-5 event), the commuter rail is pretty good; I'm a 7 minute drive to the station. But it's basically unworkable for an evening event (or a day into evening event). Trains are maybe every 90 minutes outside of commuting hours and they're largely empty. I end up suffering the drive in, paying for parking as needed (which isn't an issue if I'm going in for my usual theater), and then a pretty easy drive home. Wouldn't even think about taking rail in for the weekend.
If Tokyo was in America, your situation would be like this: imagine going outside of your home and walk for 10 minutes to a small hamburger shop. It only has 10 seats and it’s run a by hamburger nerd who makes elite hamburgers. This guy grinds his own beef, bakes his own buns and pickles his own pickles and everything is perfect. The burgers are only 8 dollars and you can’t even imagine of making hamburgers yourself.
I know, I’m familiar with Tokyo. But my family would take up half the restaurant, only one of the three kids would like the burger, and the other two would throw a shit fit because the burger guy only sells burgers. Two different societies optimizing for different things.
There are family restaurants in Japan as well. You would not bring your family to the place described above, you would go with your spouse, friends or colleges or other adults.
> We’d have to give our kids independence to take the train themselves, instead of spending every saturday driving them around to 3 different far flung activities.
The shock! The horror!
> The idea of just accepting whatever brand of hamburger buns they have at the store...
How could a family possibly survive! Imagine having to eat a different brand of hamburger buns! Truly, America is a shining beacon of modernity and convenience where I can get the exact, precise, industrially mass produced hamburger bun.
Maybe you misinterpreted the post you replied to? I don't think they were saying this stuff is a crazy proposal, just that it will be a different way of life for most Americans. No need to be so abrasive.
They were reacting to what was presented and saying that it was foolish. It doesn’t matter if the author presented it as “I am saying this” or “Americans think this”.
You’re preaching to the choir. I loved working at a company with a company cafeteria because I hated going out into midtown manhattan every day to choose lunch. But convincing americans that all their “choice” is illusory isn’t a matter of transit policy, it’s something much harder.
When we were in Japan my son walked to school when he was 6. Parts of the walk close to the school were supervised. It wasn't just allowed, it was expected.
It just occurred to me that some of the car-hating comments on HN might be motivated by a yearning for a more communal way of life (the expression of which has been suppressed by the US's ethic of freedom for the individual).
(I think your numbers include tertiary education. My numbers are K-12 only. I’m not sure which of those the UNESCO target is based on.)
reply