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Square Wheels

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Why are we hesitant to attribute top accolades to anything?

 

I remember watching a Netflix movie once with my wife, we both thought it was great.  I was going to rate it a 4, she said let's give it a 5.  I felt uneasy.  Why?

 

This morning I heard the announcer on NPR say the weather condition would be "almost" perfect this weekend.  What would have made it perfect?  It sounded pretty perfect to me.

 

Why are we so afraid to say things are excellent or perfect?

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Why are we hesitant to attribute top accolades to anything?

 

I remember watching a Netflix movie once with my wife, we both thought it was great.  I was going to rate it a 4, she said let's give it a 5.  I felt uneasy.  Why?

 

This morning I heard the announcer on NPR say the weather condition would be "almost" perfect this weekend.  What would have made it perfect?  It sounded pretty perfect to me.

 

Why are we so afraid to say things are excellent or perfect?

 

This post is perfect....almost. :)
 

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Wow, either I'm more clueless than I thought or you posted this in the wrong thread.   :)

 

 

 that was a joke, let me translate it for you.....

 

you have an excellent point...(at the top of your head). But if you wear a stocking cap, no one will notice (that you're a pin head)

 

:)

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Why are we hesitant to attribute top accolades to anything?

 

I remember watching a Netflix movie once with my wife, we both thought it was great.  I was going to rate it a 4, she said let's give it a 5.  I felt uneasy.  Why?

 

This morning I heard the announcer on NPR say the weather condition would be "almost" perfect this weekend.  What would have made it perfect?  It sounded pretty perfect to me.

 

Why are we so afraid to say things are excellent or perfect?

 

What kind of a stupid question is this?  Describing the weather as perfect is subjective based on your intended activity and needs.  75* no wind might sound like a great day to you but if your neighbor wants to fly a kite that day there is nothing perfect about it.  75 with 25 MPH wind might not sound like much fun to you if you have an out and back bike ride planned but Jfarrrrrrrt will love it if he is planning a day sailing.  75* might sound like a great temp to you but the farmer growing corn down the road wants 89 with high humidity to get good production out of the field he has invested in.

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What kind of a stupid question is this?  Describing the weather as perfect is subjective based on your intended activity and needs.

 

Agreed, then why did he say the weather this weekend will be almost perfect?  I'm not knocking his use of the word almost in this specific circumstance, but it got me thinking that I am often afraid to call things perfect, or assign the highest possible value.  When I do online surveys I usually give things that I really like a 9 out of 10, why do I do that?

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 When I do online surveys I usually give things that I really like a 9 out of 10, why do I do that?
 

 

This actually has an answer...

 

What is happening is that you are subconsciously responding in a way that you think will render your response more meaningful. I worked 10 years at Pitt working with sociologists, and all those morans do is give opinion surveys, and they usually are engineering the questions to get the results they wanted in the first place.

 

So what statistics bear out is that when people "gundeck" or "pencil whip" a survey, they make all of their answers one end of the spectrum or the other.

 

People who are thinking about their responses tend to make small variations, as if to demonstrate that they aren't just coloring in checkboxes so they can get out of there

 

Me, I give all 10s and make one or two a lesser response to let them know I really meant the 10s. That strategy doesn't actually hold up either

 

So what you are doing is just pathologically acting on a strategy aimed at making your responses stand out

 

...and you are playing right into the bell of the curve

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