Funny Email exchange with humanfactors.com

[filc]

I participated in an essay contest at the request of my girlfriend. She’s in school so she does alot of these to get added cash while she’s in school. Neither one of us really did any research on humanfactors.com before we signed up for the contest. We just saw ‘Kindle Winner’ and since my GF wants one I told her I’d do the competition for her.

In retrospect it became obvious that my submitted essay was way off in left field. I didn’t mind loosing and I deserved to loose, but what surprised me most were the winers and what they had to say. I submitted an email to HF to express my feelings about the winners. To my suprise the CEO sent me a response. Here’s what he had to say.

Serves me right for participating! Either way it sure was entertaining.

@My_Original_Email

Greetings,

I just finished reading through kindle winners at http://www.humanfactors.com. I am quiet shocked by the winners that were awarded. It seemed to me that the question presented in the essay was clearly an economic one. I assumed that HF is aware that it is most certainly dealing with economics when discussing human behavior and the propagation of user content. When reading the two winners I, and any one with basic economic understanding, can only conclude that the two authors really have no idea what they are talking about. Their response’s were mostly rhetorical and had no concrete solution nor understanding of how the technology and economics work.

Since those two essay’s won I can only conclude that HF sadly agrees to the ideas espoused by these two highcshool grade contestants. Sadly I come to the conclusion that your organization has no economic or technological understanding regarding your industry and the tech industry as a whole. The two chosen winners devastates any intellectual credibility HF had.

Allow me to quote a few items from one of the essays.

Dave Wrote

Technology solutions have to contend with our ever-growing appetite for resources and lack of understanding, which is the true root of the problem. The imperative is not to build more efficient objects but to influence people’s consumption behaviors and awareness.

Right off the bat Dave exposes his economic illiteracy by making an outrageous and irrational statement. Emphasis was included by me. We live in a scarce world. Economizing scarce goods benefits everyone as that drives down costs and makes the goods more available to everyone. Not making things less costly is counter-economical. It is also counter-beneficial to the HF concept. His comments get worse when he begins to explain his understanding of “Human Action” and praxeology. Such a statement gives the appearance that he believes human behavior is irrational, and that somehow he is the judge of that. That human behavior needs to be altered to a more rational behavior. Those who espouse to this idea however must answer hard questions, like: Who decides what human behavior is rational? What is the most beneficial rational behavior for man kind? Does HF decide? His statement seemed to be cut directly out of a socialist manifesto. When concluding Dave’s essay one cannot really take anything away. All in all the essay has no original thought and is about something I would expect from a freshmen in highschool.

Taking a look at Tim.

Tim comments

Why do people in poor nations repeat the self-destructive mistakes of rich nations?

Does Tim know what those mistakes are? Why does he assume 1st world countries are not still making those mistakes? The author reveals his ignorance regarding third world countries. Coming from someone who’s lived in a third world country this is an embarrassing comment about the author’s knowledge of not only third world countries but also his own.

Tim

Second, we can propose creative alternatives that are perceived as enhancements rather than sacrifices.

This statement is awfully confusing. Is Tim stating that there will be sacrifices but that we should lie about them? If anything this is entirely contrary to user content.

Tim continues on expressing his opinion that a bureaucracy is needed as the solution. He closes with the following statement.

The global community can only achieve sustainability by collaborating to design and adopt new solutions-solutions that solve our most basic problems, address our underlying motivations, and are easy to use.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing out of these two author’s is that they believe there is something wrong, and that this ‘something’ must be addressed and fixed. Taking a look at user generated content, technology, and sustainability the tech world is leaps and bounds in all aspects when compared to other industries. No one seems to acknowledge the success’s the tech world has had in making itself more accessible to everyone. 20 years ago very few people in the United States had Internet. Now nearly half the globe participates in this community. How is it that we can assume something is ‘wrong’? How can we justify our intervention of this innovative process to the world when it’s growth is already a success? How is it in today’s day and age we can purchase two laptops at $400 sending one to third world countries with internet capabilities via programs like the One Laptop per Child. Furthermore how is it that HF and apparently it’s followers believe these to be failures that need to be addressed?

Neither one of your final contestants has addressed our successes. Instead they act the roll of central planner taking the position that things are not working as they should be and only they, in their omniscient wisdom, can tell us the way things SHOULD be.

Truly Disappointed

– Cliff

My email may have seemed harsh but I was sensing an odd feeling from the essays of the contestants and the site as a whole. I wanted to see if I could get a response that would admit that the site was just another leftist political frontpage. The response I got was more than I could have asked for.

[filc]

Here is the response I got

@Diane

Hi Cliff,

Thank you for writing. I forwarded your remarks to Eric Schaffer and here is his response:

Cliff, I very much appreciate the time and thought to review the essays. I personally take responsibility for the final decision, and I can briefly share the reason that these were the winners. There are lots of people making nice incremental suggestions about more efficient designs. There is nothing wrong with this. But it also shows that they may not understand the magnitude of the problem. Since we are CURRENTLY using about 1.5 times the Earth’s resources we need to cut current consumption by 1/3. Now I can believe we can do that with the ‘Al Gore’ type of plan. But when you consider that there are 1-2 BILLION people who now expect to live the American dream (at 22.2 acres of consumption per person), then you realize the reality. The ecological crisis will require significant LIFESTYLE change. (oh God, I said it). And we see the job of the usability professional is in helping to design the zillion odd things that will support that lifestyle. Design them, and persuade people to want to live the new lifestyle. Anything less than this, though well intentioned and sweet, we see as a part of the process of denial, bargaining, and otherwise adjusting to the change.

Eric M. Schaffer PhD CUA CPE

CEO

Human Factors International Inc.

Diane Chojnowski

Senior Marketing Manager

Human Factors International

641-472-4480 x 148

diane.chojnowski@humanfactors.com

And here is my final response

@Me

Hello Diane,

Thanks for getting back to me. I apologize for wasting your time. I guess I mis-understood what HF was all about. I hadn’t realized that HF was so politically polarized into various economic fairy tails. I prefer to live my life in reality and address it as such. I’ll be sharing this email exchange with various friends of mine. Have a nice thanksgiving.

-Cliff

[nirgrahamUK]

Thats too bad filc. The Watermelons are everywhere.

[DD5]

You are talking to people who basically deny any existence of economic laws. It is a complete waste of time.

The lesson from this is simple: Don’t waste your precious time on such people! “such people” probably amounts to about 80% of the population.

There are literally millions out there who are just dying to become libertarians if one just shows them the way out of the Limbaugh universe they are trapped in. Imagine if you spent the time writing the essay to an audience who is more wary of government propaganda.

Revolutions are made possible by minorities and not majorities.

[filc]

Bah, I wrote the essay to win a kindle for my GF. [:P] I agree with you though about the limbaugh stuff.

[NewLiberty]

how can people be using 1.5 times the earth’s resources when the earth has only…1 times the earth’s resources…

and the word “sustainability” is such a joke. Everything is sustainable. If a resource gets low, it’s price increases, and development of substitutes increases. If a large group of people want a particular service, then they can act toward those goals voluntarily. And those providing the services and behavior that the group likes will benefit because of increase transactions. “Sustainability” is a hoax - human action is convergent, not divergent.

[filc]

I know, my mouth literally dropped when I read that. I think what bugs me the most is how so many people have such strong opinions about economic related issues yet have never read, nor intend to read anything regarding economics.

[Conza]

@DD5

You are talking to people who basically deny any existence of economic laws.

Schmollerites! [:D]

[Esuric]

@NewLiberty

how can people be using 1.5 times the earth’s resources when the earth has only…1 times the earth’s resources…

Furthermore, how can one know all of the resources potentially available to us? Oil was considered to be a worthless goo until the latter part of the 18th century. Even today we don’t know the true supply of petroleum.