Are you a “harbinger of failure”? (2015)

Are you a “harbinger of failure”? (2015)(news.mit.edu)

68 points by traumivator 5 years ago | 51 comments

pram 5 years ago |

I’m not convinced. They describe it as the result of having a “preference for risk” but maybe they’re just seeking novel experiences? If they’re trying new things simply because they’re new, then their behavior offers no predictive power. There’s very little risk associated with buying a different flavor of soda :V

maxerickson 5 years ago | |

Skimming some of the paper, it differentiates between one time purchasers of failed products (a negative signal) and repeat purchasers of failed products (a stronger negative signal).

rlonn 5 years ago | | |

It can still be a case of searching for novelty. I think my mother did this while I was growing up - she would try out new replacement products (primarily food) and start buying them for a while, until the household got fed up with them and we went back to the old product. Repeat purchases for sure, but the only draw was novelty. Trying out a new type of milk instead of the old one, etc.

Gadgets too - We got a bread baking machine, and used it quite a lot for a year or two, then people got tired of it being somewhat impractical, it ended up in the back of the cupboard and finally thrown away.

Wouldn't be surprised if there is a group of people for whom it is very rewarding trying out new products, and many products you can't just buy once and then consider it "tried out".

canofbars 5 years ago | |

Established brands thrive on this as well. Frequently releasing unusual but ultimately not very good flavour variations because many people will buy it just to find out what vegemite flavoured chocolate tastes like.

uncledave 5 years ago | | |

I am their anti-customer by definition. I suspect a lot of people don’t know what they want. I’m glad I’m not one of them.

watwut 5 years ago | |

Risk taking is new buzzword. Every other study on HN tend to frame pretty much everything in terms of risk taking, no matter how much strained and how little actual risk is involved. When having choice between two extraordinary safe decisions, somehow, pop journal psychology will always guess risk taking explanation.

And it is clearly guess here, the wording in article is clear on that.

cryptica 5 years ago |

I'm a harbinger of failure on the supply side. Whenever I join a company or new industry or make an investment or make a prediction, it does the exact opposite of what I anticipated because of some insane global event that has nothing to do with me.

For example, I was working in a bootstrapped tech startup in online education industry which was delivering real value (really great product). But didn't really go anywhere... Then I learned that the lack of success in the education sector is probably because the entire global monetary system is a scam and so, unlike in the last thousands of years, real economic value stopped mattering as soon as I entered the workforce (what are the odds of that!?).

So I learned from this and got into an extremely hyped-up blockchain project, then right after I joined, the CEO decided to cut back on marketing and focus on development, price crashed... (what are the odds?)

So I quit and started a crypto project related to travel industry, COVID19 happens... ITO fails... WTF???

Seriously, the government should just give me free money. I don't care about pride or self-fulfillment or whatever nonsense emotion some completely useless job is supposed to bring to my shitty life. Just give me free money so that I don't have to deal with any of this shit. I don't need any fancy bling, I just want unlimited time off from having to deal with our insane economy. Too bad I can't charge companies to NOT invest in them and to stay away from their employees.

captainredbeard 5 years ago | |

After reading your post all I can offer you is this phrase: certainty is an emotional state, and you seem very certain about how the most complicated system in the world (economy) works.

cryptica 5 years ago | | |

The economy beat the optimism out of me. My sense of certainty these days is based only on my skepticism of alternative explanations (which I learned were incorrect, the hard way).

marvin 5 years ago | |

Well, if you work for a publicly traded company, you could always spend part of your salary on put options on your employer.

cryptica 5 years ago | | |

That sounds like a good idea but I think that might affect the jinx ;) Clearly, the money must be given to me for free, not paid within a capitalist context or resulting from an investment strategy where I would get the credit for making a good decision. Free money (donations) is the only thing that has worked for me so far. Most of my income in the past few years has been donations.

BTW, Facebook reached out for an interview recently but I didn't follow through... So if someone reading this comment buys Facebook shares and makes a ton of money, please think of me and give me some free money.

gibolt 5 years ago |

The British comedy panel show QI (Quite Interesting) had a segment on this. One of my favorite shows to learn all kinds of random topics.

Series N, Episode 15 - https://youtu.be/PNKgry1c8Qw&t=100

gherkinnn 5 years ago | |

Related to QI, itself a lovely show, there’s No Such Thing as a Fish [0]. A podcast by some of QI’s researchers.

0 - https://www.nosuchthingasafish.com/

toyg 5 years ago | | |

Andrew Hunter Murray, one of their crew, also pops up as the host of Page 94, the Private Eye podcast, which is obviously a must for UK-based listeners: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/eyeplayer/podcast

dragontamer 5 years ago |

Pebble, Nook, a bunch of Kickstarter stuff... Lumia 950.

Also the Burger King "Big King" burger, the McDonalds chicken selects... and a few other items that I have forgotten about over the years...

I dunno if that makes me "Harbinger of Failure", but its become clear that my consumer tastes are pretty niche.

------

At least I got "unsweet ice tea" right, lol. Seems like plenty of soda companies are making that now.

HeyLaughingBoy 5 years ago | |

If it makes you feel better, I'm the only person I know of who still has a Microsoft Phone... running Windows 10!

cmxch 5 years ago | | |

Not the only one. As long as the battery and flash keeps, my 1020 will continue to be a good camera.

mszcz 5 years ago | |

I have no idea why there still isn't another eink smartwatch. It was such a wonderful piece of tech. Worked wonderfully, had days of battery life and, most importantly, non trivial and loyal customer base.

dTal 5 years ago | | |

The Pebble had a transflective LCD display (branded "e-paper"), not e-ink (a term which refers to electrophoretic displays).

I agree though that Pebble was great and there's no true replacement yet.

csunbird 5 years ago | |

The Lumia 950 was really nice, you are not alone.

dang 5 years ago |

A friend of mine who grew up in Spokane, WA told me that for some reason Spokane was regarded as the ideal product testing ground by big American corporations, and so he and his friends encountered a lot of weird products that never succeeded, and a few major ones that they saw years before everyone else. Anybody know if this is true?

Eric_WVGG 5 years ago | |

I heard that story about Columbus, Ohio. I think “the industry” has a shortlist, though. https://www.columbusmonthly.com/article/20150126/LIFESTYLE/3...

austinjp 5 years ago | | |

Okay, now I really want to see that shortlist and visit each place or watch a good documentary visit them and uncover the strange merch.

ahartmetz 5 years ago | |

There's a place like that in Germany. The most average place is actually a rather strange place. It is known as "the biggest village of Germany" (it never got promoted to a town despite having 10k residents) and it bears the somewhat ugly name "Haßloch", meaning roughly "hate hole". As you might imagine, the name is a corruption of an earlier name a long time ago.

I knew a guy there whose parents, sure enough, were giving data to several market research companies.

ncmncm 5 years ago |

I have long called certain people "Oracles of Wrong". If they are the same people, they can also be counted upon to be wrong on any issue of substance. So, anytime there is a decision to be made, look to them, and choose the opposite.

It is hard to be right all the time. Logically, it should be exactly, equally hard to be wrong all the time, but somehow more people achieve it.

In any big group of people known to each other, it is always easy to tell who the Oracles of Wrong are. (If you don't know, it might be you; but if it is, you are probably wrong about that, too.) I have had some decades to think about this, and identify other qualities of these individuals, besides their preference for wrongness. They are of above-average intelligence. They are typically upper-class; some wear a trilby. They prefer alternatives that are personally easy for them, requiring less change in habits or thinking. They have never experienced any substantial personal discomfort as a consequence of a wrong choice.

In cases of uncertainty, look to an Oracle of Wrong for anti-leadership.

spaetzleesser 5 years ago |

Is there a way to make money with this? I often find cool products on the food section which unerringly disappear after my first purchase.

I am also good at watching fads and as soon as I join they are over.

I definitely envy some people I know who have a talent for jumping on trends early. I often feeloput of sync with society .

maxerickson 5 years ago |

Paper is available at https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/111114

burnte 5 years ago |

I am, but not of the truly awful products, but of the really useful but too-niche products. I buy products that die so often I got into the habit of buying two and squirreling one away for when the first breaks, but they aren't for sale anymore.

drblast 5 years ago |

I just miss Milky Way Dark ice cream bars, raspberry schweppes ginger ale, and Jell-O 123. I can't understand how these things aren't still widely available.

asfarley 5 years ago | |

Jello 1-2-3 sounds pretty good, after Googling it.

supernova87a 5 years ago |

I guess marketers want to find all those interesting categories of people who can tell them early whether something is going to work or not. This category just happens to be the ones who always get it wrong. The other category is the "trendsetters" those hipsters who get on something (correctly) before everyone else does.

sjg007 5 years ago |

I really liked crystal pepsi.. wish it was still around. I was exposed to it in middle school I think... so I didn't have a lot of purchasing power back then. Although I am not a big fan of soda these days.

Animats 5 years ago |

I wonder if this correlates with consuming less advertising. People who don't watch many ads may not buy mainstream products.

klyrs 5 years ago | |

Yeah, I rarely learn of products before they're quite old; I only see a couple of banner ads a week and that's always jarring

jmcgough 5 years ago |

Some friends are the type who like things in part because they're weird, unpopular and unusual, or because a product flops and they're curious to try it before it's gone.

georgewsinger 5 years ago |

They're called early adopters. Thank God they exist to try out/put up with our early form products :]

smadge 5 years ago | |

I think this is describing early adopters who consistently chose products that eventually fail. Perhaps there is another subgroup of early adopters who consistently choose new products that eventually persist, “harbingers of success.”

atom_arranger 5 years ago | | |

I've felt like I'm in that second group, whenever I'm a big fan of something it becomes huge (relative to when I became a fan). I should probably start investing.

mcavoybn 5 years ago |

mcavoybn 5 years ago | |

I was upvoted for this comment at first, then harshly downvoted.

Let me expand on what I meant:

Leveraging consumer data (and marketing that process in a blog post) is an insidious affair. This article is just a rebranded, simplified version of a research paper. There are many other articles like it, and they intend to simplify and sensationalize (to the degree that they can argue plausible deniability) something outrageous.

This entire article; the webpage, the work of the author, the words the article is composed of, could easily be reduced to a simple statement: "People who are more willing to take a risk on an unusual product are more willing to take a risk in multiple categories." This such an obvious conclusion that the publisher of this article should be tried for conspiracy and fraud. A child could come to this realization.

This is clickbait, plain and simple. Furthermore, its insulting. I look forward to the day that those who publish these article lose their incentive to do so.

User23 5 years ago |

I’ve joked with my friends that I should start a go long on things that I hate fund because it would make a fortune.